AFP – The moment Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Russian filmmakers Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova and Dmitry Bogolyubov knew they had to leave Moscow.
“We were next on the list,” the couple told AFP in their rented apartment in Rehovot, a quiet Israeli town south of Tel Aviv.
Once you’re on the list of suspected “foreign agents,” you face a life of “self-censorship, or sooner or later jail,” said Bogolyubov, who directed the 2019 German-funded documentary Town of Glory.
The film shows how Russian President Vladimir Putin uses references related to the fight against Nazi Germany to establish his authority in Russian villages.
As its international isolation has deepened, Moscow views all foreign-funded films with suspicion, including documentaries, and the couple said theirs was no exception.
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“In recent years we have felt threatened. Especially in the last few months, people have been spying on us and taking photos on our film sets,” Shishova-Bogolyubova said.
Russian police officers detain a man during a protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on March 13, 2022 in central Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square. (AFP)
The couple decided to continue working in Russia, but taking advantage of their Jewish ancestry, they obtained Israeli citizenship, just in case.
Israel’s law of return gives anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent the right to citizenship, a criterion met by tens of thousands in Russia and Ukraine.
Since Russian troops invaded on February 24, nearly 24,000 Ukrainians have fled to Israel, some but not all of whom are taking advantage of the law, according to the Immigration Ministry. Around 10,000 Russians joined them, an Israeli immigration official told AFP.
“Most of them are young academics from the urban middle class,” the official said, asking not to be named.
Like the Bogolyubovs, Moscow-born linguist Olga Romanova had prepared for the day when she no longer felt safe in Russia.
She applied for an Israeli passport after Putin’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. “I always thought that one day I would move to Israel to live with my children, but that’s when I realized something was wrong in Russia,” said the 69-year-old. year-old told AFP at her son’s home outside of Jerusalem, surrounded by photos of her grandchildren.
Demonstrators protest in Tel Aviv on March 12, 2022 against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
When the invasion began on the morning of February 24, “it was proof that I had to leave as soon as possible,” Romanova said. “The war in Ukraine is incompatible with my way of thinking and my moral values. It makes me sick,” she said, fighting back tears.
The wave of immigrants from Ukraine and Russia over the past seven weeks is the largest Israel has seen since the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted hundreds of thousands to seek a new life on the shores of the Mediterranean.
“We feel safe here and can sleep peacefully again,” says Shishova-Bogolyubova. “My four-year-old daughter, who is diabetic, is fully taken care of… But we don’t know if we’ll stay – it depends on our work. At the moment we just want to live for the moment and recover from our emotions. After that we will see.”
Sergey, a violinist who asked to be addressed under a pseudonym for fear of retribution, left Moscow for Israel with his pianist and three young children but expects to move on.
“I don’t know if we’re staying here. We’ll probably go somewhere else,” he said.
Immigrants fleeing Ukraine arrive at the Immigration and Admissions Office at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on March 15, 2022. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Even for those who qualify for citizenship, Israel can be terra incognita for newcomers, and nostalgia for Russia is never far below the surface.
Romanova, the linguist, found space for only two books in her 20-kilogram luggage, one a scientific work and the other a novel by the famous Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who always accompanies her on her travels.
“I lost my country. It was stolen from me. It was stolen by Putin and those KGB thugs,” she said wistfully.
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