The real story of the Putin emigres

‘Russians are fleeing their country in droves’. That’s how Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, partners in life and journalism, sum up in seven words one of the many tragedies of Russia, from which they too have fled – further than most, to Britain. Had they stayed, Soldatov at least would be in jail, charged with spreading ‘fake news’ – or, as he puts it, ‘contradicting the state narrative’. An arrest warrant was issued against him in April, and in May, he was put on an international wanted list. A trial – in absentia – is expected in October.

Soldatov and Borogan are part of an exodus larger than any since the Bolshevik Revolution. This week, Putin’s nuke-rattling and troop-mobilisation announcement triggered a massive spike in searches for one-way flights out of the motherland. Yet already, since the beginning of the war, former Soviet states with more or less welcoming governments have been flooded: 25,000 to Georgia in the first two weeks of the Russian invasion on 24 February, 6000 a day to Armenia and by the end of March, 60,000 to Kazakhstan.