Every day in Istanbul, Ukrainians protest against the war. Among them, Russian opponents, whose activism risks having them imprisoned by the regime of Vladimir Putin. Like Andrey, a 19-year-old student activist in an association that corresponds with political prisoners, who fled Russia. Although thousands of kilometers from Saint Petersburg where he comes from, he feels under surveillance: he discovered on the site of Riafan, the Russian government news agency, that he is classified as a “renegade” , like so many other opponents who have left the country. He plans to go to the Czech Republic, which has just granted him a Schengen visa.
A Russian brain drain?
Similarly, several thousand Russians have reached Turkey, a country where they can go without having a visa. Like the Kozlov family, which has family ties in Ukraine and arrived in early March, leaving behind businesses now run by their employees. She is preparing her files to apply for a residence permit in Turkey.
Yan and Vadim, in their twenties, are programmers and have also left Russia and their jobs. Like them, many computer scientists, developers or programmers fled Russia at the start of the war. To the point of making the Russian authorities react.
A report by Rafaële Schapira, Paulina Narichkyna, Guillaume Beaufils, Luis Marques, Karim Annette, broadcast in “Special Envoy” on May 12, 2022.
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