Russians who fled abroad return in boost for Putin's war economy

“First, returning migrants tend to command higher wages and to be employed in high value-added industries — surveys show that income level was highly correlated with the likelihood of leaving the country to avoid mobilization in 2022. Second, returning workers boost activity in domestic consumer-oriented industries, such as household services, retail and real estate, instead of spending their income abroad. The latter also meant softening the capital outflow from Russia over the course of 2023.”

Alex Isakov, Russia economist

For some, Russia now offers better opportunities and working conditions than before the war because the country is trying to attract back scarce specialists. IT programmer Evgeniy and his family returned after about a year of living in Almaty, Kazakhstan, when he received an offer to work in Russia with a salary and under conditions that he “could not even dream of before.”

“This is a gift for us,” said the president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, Mikhail Kovalchuk, after CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known for the Large Hadron Collider project, announced that it would stop working with Russia’s specialists this year. That means the return of scientists to Russia, he said.

No options, but to return

While estimates of the number who left vary greatly, Alfa Bank economists in Moscow estimated that Russia lost about 1.5% of its entire workforce in 2022, or roughly 1.1 million people. While some went to Europe, many went to places such as the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Indonesia, states that didn’t follow the US and its allies in sanctioning Russia, as well as to neighboring former Soviet countries.

Russian citizens have faced difficulty or refusal when trying to renew expiring residence permits, according to Finion’s Kartamyshev. Most of those who do wind up choosing to return to Russia, he said.

Finion’s data shows that even in mostly friendly countries, such as Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, Russians have come under greater scrutiny. Several European countries, particularly in the east, have made it much harder for Russians to receive or renew temporary residence permits, as has Turkey, surprising tens of thousands of Russians, who then faced a choice of returning home or looking for another country, Kartamyshev said.

The current number of short-term residence permits for Russians in Turkey stands at around 60,000, halved from 132,000 in 2022, official data shows.

Data from Georgia’s national statistics office show the number of Russians who left the country increased by six times to 35,344 in 2023, while arriving migrants declined 16% from a year ago. Kazakhstan reported 146,000 newcomers from Russia by the end of 2022, but a Russian diplomat to Almaty claimed that after a year no more than 80,000 stayed.

The repatriation process is likely to continue. According to a study by political scientists led by Emil Kamalov and Ivetta Sergeeva at the European University Institute in Florence, only 41% of Russian migrants, and in some countries just 16%, consider their status stable or somewhat stable in their host societies. That insecurity is further exacerbated by 25% reporting experiences of discrimination, either from local people or institutions.

They found that “the world literally rallied against them,” said Anna Kuleshova, a sociologist at the Social Foresight Group, who interviews Russian immigrants. “They came back with a feeling of resentment and the feeling that ‘Putin was not so wrong after all. They really hate us.’”

Once home, many repatriates who left over their opposition to the war find different challenges. Alexander, 35, a banking IT specialist, returned to Russia from Azerbaijan because his family wasn’t comfortable there. He found a job at a large Russian bank where he said most of his colleagues support Putin and believe the propaganda about the war.

He doesn’t argue his colleagues on the matter. “It’s not safe to convince colleagues,” he said. “I’m waiting for this nightmare to end.”