Russians flee Putin's crackdown as Ukraine invasion reshapes Moscow's future

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Her friend was packing to leave the country, so she rushed to her parents’ house and implored them to do the same.

Aglaia, 23, isn’t from Kyiv, Kharkiv or any other Ukrainian city under attack. She was in St. Petersburg, Russia, more than 500 miles from the fighting.

Her relatives are among tens of thousands of people estimated to have escaped the increasingly hard-line oppression meted out by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime as he tries to crush any opposition to his struggling invasion. She asked not to be identified by her last name for fear of reprisals by Russia's state security services if she ever returns home.

(snip)

The war’s greatest toll has been on Ukraine, where Russian bombs and shells have killed civilians, leveled residential areas and forced more than 2 million people to flee. But it has disfigured the landscape of Russia in a different way.

Younger liberals, like Aglaia, describe a country closing in on itself as the regime wields Orwellian totalitarian tactics so brutal that they outstrip anything seen during Putin’s two decades in power.

(snip)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russians-flee-putins-crackdown-ukraine-invasion-reshapes-moscows-futur-rcna19004

[Wingus Dingus]

1. Brain drain, accelerated.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. People with smarts & get-up-and-go leave despotic hellholes. Sheeple stay

Of course it is not so simply divided, because many brave people do stay to fight the authoritarians.

Also, many intelligent people who would like to leave can't (economic situation for example) or won't (ailing parents for example).


But migrant people built the US while other places drained out.

[orwell]

3. The mask has come off...

...I'd be leaving too.

You can organize your Kleptocracy any way you want, but you don't get shell babies because you perceive "a threat" that doesn't exist.

That just makes you a war criminal.

Welcome to the Stalin club. You finally made the bigtime asshole!

[Karadeniz]

4. Leaving won't help Russia. They need to protest, spread the truth...

[dugog55]

5. Yes, that would be nice, but

they would probably end up in a gulag in Siberia after two days. It is not like our peaceful protests here, where you can be armed, storm the Capital building while beating up/killing police, then just walk away without hardly any arrests.

To this day, that is the most shameful piece white privilege bullshit I have ever seen. Literally thousands of insurrectionists just walked away. They may be getting picked up now, but every single person there should have been in handcuffs.