'We Have to Run': Inside the Exodus of Moscow

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/inside-moscow-exodus-1317069/

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https://archive.ph/H4qDi


MOSCOW — In that moment, it hit me just how quickly independent journalism died out. Karen Shainyan, my most optimistic friend, whose eyes always reflected confidence and courage, had stayed optimistic on the darkest days—when members of the Chechen LGBT community were rounded up and tortured, when the authorities designated independent media as “foreign agents” and even when the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was poisoned and arrested and sentenced to years in prison. Now those eyes were filled with fear. On Sunday, I saw him terrified for the first time. “Everything we hoped for is falling apart, all our dreams. We have to run,” he said.

The Russian middle class as we knew it took decades to grow. It fell apart in days. Then, the exodus began. Journalists, businessmen, artists, popular TV presenters, pop stars – some of Russia’s most talented professionals were fleeing the country.

Before the war Shainyan had two little sons — one in Kyiv and another in Moscow. They had suddenly become political symbols, of a kind. A few days before Shainyan and I spoke at the crowded Flaner restaurant in Kitai Gorod, Moscow hipsters’ favorite neighborhood, Putin decided to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. In his speech, Putin declared: “I hope that the Russian population would support me.” Shainyan was among the first Russian bloggers, who spoke out: “No fuck, not a single reasonable Russian is going to support it,” he wrote, posting a picture of those two boys. “What he declares promises only death, poverty and horrible reputational losses.”

A few days later Shainyan realized how badly authorities decided to crack down on all dissenters: 15 years in prison for everybody who spreads “fake news.”

*snip*

[crickets]

1. "Putin is destroying two countries at once."

True, and so unnecessary and sad.