Business Insider | Thousands of Russian tech workers pulled off a perilous escape from their crumbling homeland. Now they face an anti-Russian backlash, reluctant banks, and sky-high rents.
By Belle Lin, Masha Borak, Kylie Robison
Three weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Nikolai, a Russian website and app designer, and his Ukrainian partner landed in the Serbian capital of Belgrade with a handful of possessions in two suitcases and a pocketful of cash. The designer, who asked that his name be changed to protect his identity, was nervous. He was a reserve officer in the Russian army and convinced that he would be among the first to get drafted.
But after arriving in Belgrade, they quickly found themselves under a new set of challenges: The influx of Russian exiles and Ukrainian refugees that had flooded Belgrade meant that finding a place to live was nearly impossible. Soon after arriving, Nikolai's Russian bank cards stopped working, and the money he withdrew before leaving wouldn't last long. Meanwhile, as a foreigner, banks refused to open an account for him, making it difficult to receive funds from his international clients.
"Maybe it was irrational," he said, referring to his departure, "but we didn't have much time to think."
Nikolai is one of the more than 70,000 IT workers that have fled the country since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February. Industry groups and investors with close ties to Russia warn that this exodus is only the first wave and many more of the country's most talented entrepreneurs and technology leaders will soon flee as well.
"In 1917, there was a similar exodus, but it took a few years," said Anton Gladkoborodov, a tech entrepreneur who moved to the US from Russia several years ago, referring to those who fled the country during the Russian Revolution. "This is happening now in a matter of weeks."
As flights out of Russia become harder to find, tech workers who do manage to leave say they're facing a new set of challenges, from finding affordable housing amid surging rental prices to overcoming growing anti-Russian sentiment.
Alexandra, a data analyst from St. Petersburg who asked that her name be changed to protect her identity, was a regular at street protests opposing the war before she escaped the country. She had watched civil liberties deteriorate for years — but when Russia invaded its neighbor, she'd had enough.
As the war went on, "crazy stuff" began to happen, she said, including Russian police searching her friends' apartments and electronics. New censorship rules that shuttered independent media and policed the way citizens talked about the war meant she could no longer safely voice her opposition.
Kristina, a Moscow-based chief marketing officer for an AI startup in California, who also spoke under a pseudonym to protect her identity said that tech workers speaking out against the war are also being treated with hostility by their neighbors. While Kristina is leaving Russia soon, she said she has received threatening messages from a neighbor, who wrote, "You are the Putin enemy," and "The police are already after you."
Many Russian tech employees that Insider talked to cited the inability to speak freely and the fear of being drafted into Russia's conscript army as primary reasons for leaving. Others said they were motivated to leave by the impact economic sanctions would have on their livelihoods, including the inability to get paid by foreign clients.
To staunch the outflow of talent, the Russian government has offered some tech workers favorable loans, mortgage rates, and even income-tax exemptions. With the government planning to sign over 130,000 military conscripts, as The Washington Post has reported, Russia's Ministry of Defense is reportedly giving IT employees deferment from the military draft.
The Kremlin has also started running propaganda on local news websites discouraging workers from leaving. "Russian IT specialists are not succeeding in reaching top positions in the US," one headline read.
But neither those incentives nor the propaganda seem to be working. According to one Russian trade group, more than 170,000 more IT workers will leave by the end of the month.
To organize their departures, tech workers have turned to the messaging app Telegram to share details on everything from flights out of the country to tech jobs that Russian workers can apply to remotely.
When Alexandra, the data analyst, planned her escape in early March, she scoured Telegram channels with a bot that notified users of ATMs that were stocked with US dollars and euros. Even when she rushed to the ATM at a local mall at 1 a.m., a packed crowd of people were already there, waiting to withdraw money. Cash went fast, she said, with people trying to hoard foreign currencies as the value of the ruble deteriorated. She eventually gave up on trying to withdraw money before leaving.
A week later, Alexandra bought a ticket to Tbilisi, Georgia, on the low-cost Turkish airline, Pegasus. The next day, Pegasus stopped operating in Russian airspace. She had gotten out in the nick of time.
As Russia closed its airspace to dozens of countries, one San Francisco-based Russian entrepreneur, who spoke to Insider on the condition of anonymity because they still have family in Russia, said they saw tickets out of the country selling for a whopping $3,000. In response, they and other Bay Area Russian entrepreneurs spent roughly $150,000 on flights to evacuate their Russian employees.
"I called some people I know and they gave me a private jet," they said. "And you show up there with cash and give it to the private jet person and they put you on a flight."
Ultimately, according to the entrepreneur, it was cheaper to charter a flight out of the country than pay for exorbitant ticket prices.
To help tech workers leave the country, Kristina, the CMO at the AI startup, said she created an online document on the note-taking app Notion, with updated information on the remaining flights out of the country, new sanctions, or Russian bank cards that had been blocked. She said the document has been viewed over a million times.
Kristina considers herself among the lucky ones. Earlier this year, she nabbed an O-1 visa, a classification for workers whom US immigration has deemed to have extraordinary abilities in their field. Her highly valued technology skills, resources, and connections in the US helped Kristina acquire the designation, offered to an exclusive list of high-profile names like Justin Bieber and Piers Morgan.
Even after securing a precious visa or a flight out, Russian immigration officers closely monitor departing workers' every move. Marina Domracheva, the founder of 3D Predict, a startup based in New York that uses AI to create dental aligners, said she advised her employees preparing to cross the Russian border to delete Instagram, which the Russian government banned in March, and limit the amount of cash they carried after the Kremlin barred taking more than $10,000 out of the country.
According to Alexandra, Russian workers are also transferring their funds into cryptocurrencies, in order to access funds outside the country. She also deleted any political information from her phone before leaving the country, after being warned that immigration officers at airports were checking people's messages for mentions of Putin, the war, or any connections to Ukraine. Others wiped their phones entirely or used burner phones while leaving Russia.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, around 10,000 Russian scientists and mathematicians immigrated to the United States. The Bush administration further facilitated the Russian brain drain by passing the Soviet Scientist Immigration Act of 1992. It was the single largest influx of scientific talent to the US since World War II.
But while the majority of tech workers who've left Russia view countries like Georgia and Armenia as stops on their way to Silicon Valley, US immigration policies are no longer as welcoming to foreign workers. Caps on the most popular foreign-worker visa, the H-1B, and the restrictive requirements of the O-1 visa have made it difficult for high-skilled workers to immigrate to the United States.
Instead, a majority of Russians are resettling in former Soviet republics like Georgia and Armenia, or countries like Turkey and Dubai, all of which have friendlier immigration policies that ease the process of obtaining work visas and residency.
"My biggest shame is that the US is doing zero to get these people," said Nick Davidov, a Russian-born venture capitalist living in California's Bay Area. "It's pretty much impossible for them to get into the United States."
Georgia's digital-nomad visa — a program the country's government introduced to subsidize pandemic-related losses in tourism — has made it possible for nearly 35,000 Russian tech workers to resettle in the country. Similarly, Armenia allows Russians to enter the country on a domestic ID and has created a working group tasked with helping Russian entrepreneurs and businesses relocate to the country.
Renat Khayretdinov, the founder of a Russian IT services company, said he landed in Armenia's capital, Yerevan, on March 3, and was able to establish a new legal entity for his business just four days later. In his first month living there, he said the city's bustling startup scene reminds him of Silicon Valley. "Given the penetration of digital technologies and the availability of communications around the world, it's not necessary to go to San Francisco," he said.
Domracheva, the founder who recently relocated her workers to Dubai, said Mexico and Panama are also on the table, as she plans for the long-term resettlement of her workers. Moving to Latin America would allow them to work closer to US time zones, where her company is based.
As Russian workers establish their new lives in exile, some say they're worried about the costs they've paid.
To open an account at the Bank of Georgia, Russian citizens are required to sign a statement condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as its actions in Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008 over contested territories near the Georgia-Russia border. The document could be used against them if they return to Russia, but according to Davidov, people rarely refuse to sign — considering the sanctions on their home accounts, it's the simplest way to get paid.
According to Kristina, Russians in Georgia are also experiencing a wave of Russophobia while out shopping or at gyms. Other Russian exiles have encountered signs in major Tbilisi streets that read "Russians are not welcome."
"From abroad, it's hard to clearly see the difference in views between Russians who support Putin and the Russians who had to flee the country so they would not be put in jail for speaking out against the regime," Kristina said.
The influx of Russians in cities like Belgrade, Yerevan, and Tbilisi has also driven up the price of rental units. In Yerevan, rent is two to three times higher now than what it was in February, before the invasion.
In Serbia, Nikolai, the app designer, said real estate agents often refused their calls complaining he and his partner would never be able to obtain residency in the country. "It's just not reasonable," he said. "People are also asking to pay them upfront for half a year. That's a lot of money!" Agents also questioned the LGBTQ couple on why a Ukrainian man and a Russian man wanted to move in together, he said.
Twenty days after he first landed in Belgrade, Nikolai made the uneasy decision to return to Russia. While he hopes to move to France, he fears the government may not let him leave again. But life in Belgrade was untenable for him.
"It's just not easy. Serbia is very bureaucratic," he said.
Despite these setbacks, if these new highly skilled emigres decide to settle in their newfound homes, the next big Russian innovations could happen in cities nestled between the Caucasus Mountains rather than Mountain View, California.
Alexandra is still hoping to resettle in Europe after living in Georgia for a year. Khayretdinov, on the other hand, is convinced he'll stay in Yerevan. As more Russian workers resettle in the country, he sees it becoming a networking mecca with access to new potential clients, investors, and partners.
"There is a theory that everyone in the world is separated by six degrees, or six handshakes," he said. "In Armenia, that theory has been shortened to one handshake."