An entire generation of young Russians are leaving the country, and as it sinks into neo-Stalinism it is not hard to understand why. If the UK, along with the other major western powers, offered hundreds of thousands of visas to Russia’s brightest young talents we would boost our own economies.
And we would rob Putin of his greatest asset – as well as providing a vivid illustration of how completely his twisted version of Russian nationalism was failing.
The war in the Ukraine has created the biggest movement of people in several generations. Three million Ukrainians have fled the country, and the total could reach four, five or even six million. Many will soon be building new lives for themselves in Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, France and Britain.
Of course, if – as now seems increasingly likely – some form of free and independent Ukraine emerges from the war, many may well go home to be reunited with their families and to rebuild their shattered nation.
There is another exodus, however, even if it is happening in slow motion, and while it is less dramatic it may be just as significant in the longer term. The cream of an entire generation of young Russians are leaving the country.
How many? Konstantin Sonin, an economist at the University of Chicago, has estimated that as many as 200,000 Russians fled over the first few days of the conflict, heading for countries that allow them entry without visas such as Georgia, Armenia and most of all Turkey and Israel.
It had already been happening to some degree. A report from the Atlantic Council in 2019 estimated that the size of the “Putin Exodus” over the last two decades at between 1.6 million and 2 million people. But that is about to turn into a flood.
There are no restrictions on leaving, at least for now. People are voting with their feet.
No one could blame them. Life under Putin’s neo-Stalinism looks grim. Sanctions may or may not be enough to persuade him to stop the war. But there can be no question they will hammer the Russian economy. It is estimated to shrink by 30pc or more this year, worse even than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As Germany and Italy finally summon up the willpower to block its oil and gas its only major industry will be destroyed. Almost all Western companies have pulled out, and the few that shamefully remain will soon be forced out by consumer boycotts.
Meanwhile, any pretence of democracy or the rule of law has been abandoned, with random arrests, a resurgent secret police and the recreation of a full terror state. Putin has taken the country straight back to the early 1950s. It is no place to make a life or a career.
And yet Russia is bursting with talented, clever people, just as it always has been. It ranks fifth for the most Nobel prizes won. It ranks sixth in the world for the most patents granted annually. Although their oligarchs with their stolen fortunes attracted most of the attention, there was already plenty of evidence of a growing number of Russian entrepreneurs building real businesses, usually outside their own country.
