Analysis of search data, immigration data and flight information, as well as interviews with experts, activists and people inside the country, shed light on how people who can no longer live in Vladimir Putin’s Russia try to escape in the midst of the president’s war in Ukraine and political repression at home. Russians’ interest in the issue of “immigration” on Google quadrupled from mid-February to early March. Searches for “travel visas” have almost doubled, and for a Russian equivalent of “political asylum” they have more than increased fivefold. In the search for immigration over the past 30 days, Australia, Turkey and Israel have been some of the top destinations in the trend, along with Russia-friendly Serbia and Armenia, as well as Georgia – which has been invaded by the Russians. troops in 2008. It is difficult to determine exactly how many Russians have actually left the country, or indeed could have done so. Financial constraints, skyrocketing travel prices and limited availability of departures after a series of flight delays risk trapping those who are fed up with Putin’s Russia. “On February 24, everything changed, our lives were divided into before and after,” said Veronica, a 26-year-old digital marketing marketer living in Moscow. She gave a nickname to protect her identity. She did not want to make a hasty decision as she watched her friends and acquaintances hastily pack their bags, violate rental agreements and “leave for Yerevan, Tbilisi and Istanbul with their pets” for days. after learning that Russia had attacked Ukraine. Instead, he went to anti-war demonstrations in the Russian capital. But in early March, Veronica began to realize that the situation was getting worse. “Police started taking activists straight from their apartments, removing people from the subway,” she told CNN, adding that police had come to her parents’ house in Siberia to threaten her. New legislation was passed in Russia in early March that could send people to prison for up to 15 years for posting or sharing information about the war that authorities believe is false. They even made the use of the word “war” illegal, Veronica said. The glass that overflowed the glass for her, however, was the reaction of the wider Russian population who believe that she largely “believes in television propaganda”. According to a recent independent poll, 58% of Russians support their country’s military action in Ukraine and only 17% believe that Russia has begun to escalate the conflict with Ukraine. “I was screaming that it was time to protest, to go to rallies, to write complaints to MPs – instead, people went shopping on the last working day of IKEA,” Veronica said. “I do not want to live with such people, they broke my heart.” Veronica and her partner started a desperate attempt to leave Russia. “It does not matter where we go, we just want to escape,” he told CNN. In a recent speech, Putin described Russians who do not support him as “traitors” and described their departure as “necessary self-purification of society.” [that] it will only strengthen our country “. “Any people, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and just spit them out like a mosquito that accidentally threw them in their mouth, spit them out on the sidewalk,” he said. chairman. However, the departure from Russia of activists, human rights defenders and political leaders is a big and remarkable trend, according to Egor Kuroptev, director of the Free Russia Foundation in Georgia. “The country is being occupied by a dictator. Independent media are being destroyed. Social networks such as Facebook and Instagram are blocked. There are new crackdowns on activists,” he told CNN, confirming that those who remain are now under threat.

One way ticket

Political persecution is just one of the reasons why some Russians are trying to escape. In addition, some families do not believe the situation inside the country will improve, worry about the possible enlistment of their sons in the army or want western education for their children, according to Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior associate at Carnegie Moscow. Centre. Nikolai, who is identified with an alternative name for his protection, is only 16 years old. In early March, his parents made the difficult decision to send him to Tbilisi, Georgia, to be reunited with his older brothers, who were already there. They want to seek political asylum in Europe later. “In the early days of the war, all my friends and I went to protest against him and hundreds of people were arrested,” Nikolai told CNN. “Police stop people on the streets, people who just walk, go to shops and ask them to look at their phones, Telegram and social media and then the police pick them up and hold them. [them],” he said. Nikolai’s mother waited almost a week, hoping the conflict would escalate, but on March 2, she told him to take a Covid-19 test and bought him a one-way ticket to Yerevan, Armenia the next day. “It was not a discussion, it was like going now,” he said. From there, he shared a taxi to Tbilisi with other travelers. “So many people came here when the war started,” he told CNN, adding that he had met friends he did not even know were in the Georgian capital. “You go shopping for dinner, you go to the supermarket or a store and you hear Russian words and you see Russian faces. In cafes, everywhere. It’s a new reality for Georgians as well.” Since the start of the war until March 16, more than 30,400 Russians have entered Georgia and more than 17,800 have fled, meaning more than 12,600 were in the country at the time, according to Georgian Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri. That is almost 14 times more Russian immigrants than the same period in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic, he said. In addition, almost 10 times more Belarusians have come to Georgia since the war broke out compared to 2019, when tourism was still high, according to Gomelauri.

Latest planes

Georgia is one of the few countries that is affordable and accepts Russians who leave without long visa procedures. Other options include post-Soviet countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Those who can afford it usually go to popular holiday destinations, such as Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. There were no direct flights to Georgia from the Russian invasion in 2008. But for many other destinations, CNN data analysis by Flightradar24 revealed a significant increase in daily flights from Russian cities during the first two weeks of the war. Daily departures to Armenia increased by almost a third compared to the winter average – up to 34 planes departed from Russia for this country with less than three million inhabitants on March 6. Daily flights to Kazakhstan and Israel increased by about 50%. Turkey, Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates have an average of one, three and four extra flights a day respectively. It is not clear how many people who flew directly to neighboring countries would stay there and how many would aim to reach Europe, the United States and other western countries.

The outgoing Russians have few options

As 37 countries moved to ban flights from Russia in the days following its invasion of Ukraine, in some destinations the opposite was observed – an increase in air traffic. Five additional flights a day departed for Armenia at the start of the war.

  • Pre-invasion data is the winter average (excluding war) from December 1st to February 23rd. Για The data for after the invasion are the first two weeks of the war (February 24 to March 9). Data for March 9 are incomplete. Note: Changes in average daily flights may be due to a number of reasons, one of which is war. Those who were fast enough (and had the Schengen visas that made it possible) jumped on the last planes going to the European Union (EU) in the early days of the war. Flightradar24 data show an increase in flights to many European countries, including Cyprus, Spain, Finland and Hungary, in the days before the closure of the airspace. But options are dwindling rapidly, with many of those routes still open not being able to operate due to the inability of carriers to secure or lease aircraft due to sanctions. Among other things, airlines in two major potential destinations for the Russians, Kazakhstan Air Astana and Turkish Airlines, suspended all flights to Russia in mid-March. In the winter months before the war, more than 210 airlines operated in Russia internationally, but by early March that number had dropped to just under 90, according to Flightradar24. Airlines fly to no more than a third of foreign airports previously linked to Russia, data from early March show.

“Almost impossible to leave”

Veronica said she and her partner had already spent 260,000 rubles (about $ 2,500) on canceled flights that had not yet been returned. “First we bought plane tickets to Yerevan on March 5, with the Russian company s7, but it was canceled. Then we bought tickets to Yerevan with a Russian airline Aeroflot on March 8 – but this flight was also canceled. Then we bought from the Turkish “Pegasus Airlines, a plane to Istanbul for April 1 and today we learned that this too was canceled,” he told CNN. Efforts to cross the land border are also problematic as Russia barred its citizens from leaving the country by land in 2020, officially due to the coronavirus pandemic, with only a few exceptions. “Now it is almost impossible to leave the country,” Veronica said. “If there are plane tickets, they are very expensive for us. We are very …