Heavy-handed censorship, massive levels of war propaganda and outright intimidation/suppression has resulted in the largest wave of politically -motivated self-exile in Russian history.

Grim economic prospects, mandatory mobilization and an unsuccessful war have created this mass emigration. Estimates for those who left in 2022 alone are a half million. Observers describe this group as consisting mainly of young professionals, in many sectors, who were impelled to leave immediately after Russia’s Ukraine invasion on February 24, 2022. Some put the current total of those that fled at one million.
But the new wave of the desperate abandoning their homeland actually began in 2021, the year that an autocratic regime intensified its suppression of the opposition and its social infrastructure. During that year, some 1,500 activists and journalists left Russia, destined mainly for Georgia, Ukraine and Lithuania. The size of this exodus in 2022 is unknown, but the activists themselves put it at several thousand, with now the main country of choice being Germany.

Since the war began, Putin has been able to demolish all vestiges of a civil society. Some 20,000 dissidents are imprisoned and any independent media has been eliminated. About two thirds of the public cite government media as their main source of information. Revealing actual facts about the war in Ukraine could carry a 15-year prison sentence, driving some 500 journalists out of the country in 2022. The promotion of anti-Ukraine hate speech in schools is accompanied by intimidating surveillance. This flagrant repression characterizes not just an autocratic, but a totalitarian regime.


(Pikemalt saab lugeda Eesti Elu 3. novembri 2023 paber- või digilehest eestielu.ca)

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