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

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Even Moscow’s most determined, most outspoken, most optimistic people have decided to go: “Everything we hoped for is falling apart, all our dreams”

MOSCOW — In that moment, it hit me just how quickly things had gone wrong. 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.


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

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1. It is exactly what the Putin party (GQP)

wants for America, perpetual minority rule.