by Marco Imarisio
Tens of thousands have left the country for the Baltic States, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Serbia. Starting with many IT professionals
“Nothing is more important than children’s health. Vladimir Putin has never been indifferent to the demands of our foundation and our doctors. All his promises have always been kept, his help is constant. So I will choose him out of conviction.”
The awardwinning actress
The one who ended his video message with a smile full of sweetness in 2012 is the same one who left Russia ten years later, on the evening of March 21, with his three daughters, due to the choices made by the man he chose campaign. “Of course I could have stayed. I should lie to myself, lie to the world and my Ukrainian friends, and then teach my little girls how to live a lie. There was no other option but to leave. ‘ The same year that she helped win the reelection of the Russian President, Chulpan Khamatova was awarded the title of Russia’s Most Popular Actress, the highest artistic recognition she could aspire to at home. “One of those people you just have to love,” said Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky at the ceremony, who changed jobs today and is the head of Russia’s delegation for negotiations and talks with Ukraine. It referred to Khamatova’s main activity, the Gift of Life Foundation, which is its original name and which has helped over 73,000 underage cancer patients since 2006. Now he is answering from his home in central Riga, Latvia.
War news in real time
Let’s call it the Russian diaspora. “Over two hundred thousand people left the country in the last month,” Joe Biden said in Warsaw yesterday. A few days ago, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet wrote that at least 14,000 Russian citizens had landed in Istanbul and Ankara. Armenian authorities claim that a similar flow was registered at Yerevan Airport and at the border crossing with Georgia. Finland said it has taken in over 20,000 Russian citizens, as have all three Baltic countries. Not long before reaching the number indicated by the American President. “I was a happy man,” says Kamran Manafly, now a former geography teacher at Moscow’s Gymnasium 498, who emigrated to Lithuania. “I simply refused to justify the special military operation in Ukraine to my students.” The next day he was fired for “immoral conduct,” with a disgrace that will make it impossible for him to teach in his country again. “I don’t think that a state employee is the same as a slave of the state.”
effect of sanctions
The Russian exodus is not only explained by conscientious objection. Sanctions are also leading to a forced choice for thousands of young people who have worked in the field of technology. «The first wave was 5070 thousand people. The only thing holding back the second is the fact that no one wants to work abroad with people from our country anymore». It was not a dangerous dissident who said those words, but Sergey Plugokarenko, head of RAEC, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications. And he did so in the Duma, during a session whose agenda was “the development of the IT sector under sanctions.” According to his forecasts, another 70,000 to 100,000 technicians and software programmers will leave by April. The reason is simple, he said. You no longer see any prospects.
The refuge of young IT, English acronym for information technology, has become Serbia. Perhaps the country where support for the special military operation is most widespread, one of the few that refuses to impose sanctions and leaves open air links with Moscow. The Telegram group for newcomers has five thousand members. “I know it’s a paradox,” explains engineer Iakov Borevich from a bar in central Belgrade. When he arrived at the apartment he rented in Belgrade, he noticed a poster on the wall. Putin’s face and below it the inscription Brother in Cyrillic. “If they tell me killings of civilians are fake news, I’ll cut the conversation short. Ultimately, we are not here to discuss international politics. But to find work ».
March 27, 2022 (Modification March 27, 2022 | 09:04)
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