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Four years after Russia’s wartime exodus began, another wave may be starting. Political scientist Margarita Zavadskaya on what we’ve learned about Russian emigration since 2022.

Source: Meduza

In 2026, Russians are once again leaving the country en masse. For them, the long process of building a new life almost from scratch is only beginning. Meanwhile, many emigrants have already lived in several countries — and still haven’t found a place to settle down. Others have found a genuine new home, while still others have returned to Russia. Meduza spoke with political scientist Margarita Zavadskaya, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and one of the co-founders of the OutRush project, which studies Russian emigration, about adapting to life abroad, the conflict between “those who left” and “those who stayed,” and the differences between the various waves of emigration.

— How do you generally feel about the discourse around “those who left” and “those who stayed”? Sometimes it seems like this conflict exists only on social media.

— This trope is useful to Russian propaganda, which deliberately promotes it: the idea that those who left are traitors. But there’s also resentment in it from people who don’t support the war and the regime but, unlike “those who left,” are forced to stay in Russia or can’t afford to emigrate. It’s quite possible they feel their compatriots abandoned them. Or they want to stay and consider that the right decision.

The Levada Center asked people how they feel about “those who left,” though those questions were specifically about celebrities. For example, they asked how you feel about Alla Pugacheva. And the poll shows there’s some negativity, but it doesn’t reflect the full picture. The number of people in Russia who have someone who left the country is very small, and it’s hard to dislike someone you’ve never met in your life. So I don’t think there’s really a big rift. But the insidious thing is that even by discussing this narrative, by giving it attention, we’re effectively helping it gain traction.

— How are people outside Russia experiencing this disconnect? Do they feel increasingly removed from what’s happening in Russia and from their loved ones there? After all, things are changing very quickly: drone attacks, fuel shortages, and so on.

— Unfortunately, I don’t have data recent enough to assess how the drone attacks and the fuel crisis have affected relationships within families. But if we look further back, since Russia had gone through upheavals before, those who left tend to feel more empathy toward those who stayed than the other way around. It’s a kind of emotional asymmetry. One of the recent studies from 2026, which I worked on and where I interviewed participants, shows there’s no aggression toward those who stayed. On the contrary, people miss them, want to stay in touch, and regularly keep in contact not only with family members but with friends too.

— Based on your data, do emigrants tend to read news from Russia more or less over time?

— There’s a sense that people are getting more irritated and tired. By 2023, even before Alexey Navalny’s death, many were already complaining that they were sick of reading the news. But few decide to step out of the Russian-language media space entirely.

Everyone is tired of depressing news, and the media are responding to that demand. More entertainment-oriented, quasi-political content is appearing, such as [the show on the independent Russian broadcaster TV Rain] Drama Queens.

— How many people have you surveyed during your research?

— At the start of the [full-scale] war, several colleagues and I co-founded the OutRush project, which has used questionnaires to survey a total of about 18,000 respondents who left Russia after February 24, 2022.

The sample of respondents isn’t representative, but that’s a problem with all migrant studies, including in countries with advanced statistics and immigrant tracking. That’s because it’s hard to determine where the boundaries of diasporas lie. That is, who counts as part of the Russian-speaking diaspora — in Germany, for example, where there are “late repatriots”, who receive German passports right away but in practice often remain within the Russian-speaking community? All existing studies obviously have sampling biases. Ours skews more liberal, more antiwar.

— Do you distinguish waves in Russian migration after 2022?

— I’d say those are fairly loose categories. Personally, I’m not a fan of dividing people into “Septembrists” [those who left when mobilization began] and “Februarists.” It’s as if there’s a moral hierarchy built into it: we’re the real emigrants, who left before the state wanted to claim our bodies, while those who left in September are somehow defective. That’s the wrong way to frame the question, especially for a researcher. Besides, many people left for ideological reasons after September as well.

— But right now there’s a lot of talk about a “new wave of migration” amid rumors of mobilization. Is that reasoning justified? Will we see a major outflow of people this fall?

— There are indeed grounds to talk about heightened readiness to emigrate right now. But I’d separate a simple rise in the desire to leave from an actual mass outflow that has already occurred. Right now we’re seeing a lot of indirect signs of the former. For example, Kovcheg reports that it received almost eight times more inquiries in August than in May. But there are still no lines at the borders and no shortage of tickets to visa-free countries. So anxiety and readiness to leave have clearly grown, but it’s not yet on the scale of 2022.

Right now we’re dealing with rumors of a possible mobilization, not an announced one. Russian authorities publicly deny having such plans. The conditions for a new wave of emigration have formed, but its scale will depend heavily on whether a new, sharp trigger occurs.

A “wave” isn’t just the moment when everyone on social media starts discussing emigration. For a researcher, several independent indicators need to align. The first is intent: search queries, inquiries to organizations that help with relocation, demand for consultations with migration lawyers, interest in renting housing and working abroad. The second is actual movement: border crossings, the number of Russians entering Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other countries, airline ticket sales. And the third is “putting down roots” in the new place: applications for residence permits and other legal statuses, enrolling children in school, registering businesses, employment, long-term rentals. The OECD also recommends combining official statistics with digital and other real-time sources when forecasting migration.

How difficult is it to emigrate in 2026

— How is emigration in 2026 different from emigration in 2022? It feels like the reasons now aren’t quite the same as before. In February 2022, the reasons were primarily ethical, while during the mobilization, it was fear for one’s life. Now it seems more like accumulated fatigue: internet censorship, the gasoline crisis, problems with Wildberries, and new strikes.

— There’s actually a fairly significant difference here. That said, I wouldn’t describe February 2022 too rigidly as purely a “moral” emigration. Even then the reasons were mixed: rejection of the war, fear of political consequences, companies and jobs closing, the breakdown of established professional networks, uncertainty about the future (this is visible in OutRush’s early data from the first months of the [full-scale] war). September 2022, on the other hand, really was a much more unambiguous shock: for a great many men, there was suddenly a direct risk of ending up at war.

By 2026, emigration looks more like one driven by accumulated risk: four and a half years of war, internet restrictions, a worsening economic situation, problems with familiar services, drone attacks, a sense of closing opportunities, and, on top of that, rumors of mobilization. So I wouldn’t say there’s less fear now.

There’s another difference from 2022 as well. Over these years an emigration infrastructure has already emerged: people have friends and relatives abroad, Telegram chats, guides, experience from previous attempts to relocate, and a sense of prices and countries.

— Is it easier for people leaving now than for those who emigrated in 2022?

— Any migration is stressful, but it’s also, to some extent, a story about privilege, if we’re talking about a decision to emigrate on one’s own rather than situations where people were literally evacuated.

First, you need to know that you’re welcome wherever you’re going; second, you need to know how to get the paperwork done; third, you need money for it. You either have a job offer from a company, or the option of getting a residence permit, if we’re talking about the European Union.

Those who left later aren’t necessarily people who have it easier. In many ways, it can be the opposite: harder for them. For example, because of the work of ICE in the United States, migrants’ lives there have become much more unpredictable. Attitudes toward Russians are also changing in the European Union — Germany, for instance, effectively stopped issuing humanitarian visas in 2025, even to those who fear persecution from Russia.

Hi, I’m Vladislav Gorin.

I’m the host of Meduza’s daily Russian-language daily news podcast. This summer, the Russian authorities opened a criminal case against me — not for committing a crime, but for telling the truth about Russia and its war against Ukraine.

Because the Kremlin has branded me a criminal, I can’t go home. I also can’t safely travel to countries like Turkey — even though it’s a NATO member — because I could be arrested and extradited to Russia. I can’t even renew my passport at the consulate anymore. 

None of this is going to stop me. I know there are hundreds of thousands of people in Russia who don’t want this war and who still believe in freedom and democracy, and they deserve access to independent journalism. Please support Meduza so I can keep reaching them. 

— Do people handle a second or third move more easily, or does each subsequent one wear them down even more?

— Among OutRush’s respondents from 2022–2024, many had already changed their country of residence, and some had even changed countries five or six times. How people handle moving, across the sample as a whole, depends on the person’s age and whether they’re burdened with family and children. But overall we quite rarely come across people who genuinely enjoyed it, though these people did exist too.

I remember an interview from Latin America: the person ended up there after making a huge journey through Asian countries. He deliberately chose not to go to the nearby European Union, because he didn’t want problems stemming from his Russian passport. And he was happy with his choice.

— If the situation in Russia keeps getting worse, but not too drastically, will people keep leaving, or will they get used to it at some point and the outflow will stop?

— Both processes happen at the same time. On one hand, people really do adapt to almost anything. What was perceived as an emergency four years ago is gradually becoming part of everyday life. So the same deterioration in conditions can provoke a much weaker reaction a few years later.

There’s also a self-selection effect. Many of those for whom it was easiest to leave — people with foreign languages, remote jobs, international connections, savings — have already done so. Increasingly, those who remain include people for whom the cost of emigrating is especially high: elderly parents, children, mortgages, a profession that’s hard to transfer to another country, lack of money. So a worsening situation doesn’t automatically translate into a proportional rise in emigration.

But adaptation also has a limit. Gradual deterioration often produces not a smooth curve of emigration but a series of steps: for a while almost nothing happens, then a trigger appears, and we see a spike. There’s another important point: the worse the economic situation gets, the more people may want to leave, but the fewer people can afford to. So rising discontent within the country doesn’t necessarily translate into an equivalent rise in actual emigration.

How Russian emigrants are adapting abroad (spoiler: not badly)

— What do your respondents call themselves? It seems like many, for example, don’t really like the word “emigrant.”

— In April 2027, a book I co-authored with two other researchers is coming out, bringing together the results of all our work over the past several years. One of the chapters, and the beginning of the book, is devoted precisely to how people refer to themselves. We spent a long time thinking about what to call them, because many people find the word “migrants” unpleasant, partly because it echoes migrants within Russia. We often characterize Russians who left after February 2022 as advanced, urbanized people who understand ideas about coloniality within Russia. But many still don’t like calling themselves migrants, because it seems to lower their social status.

Some people like the word “relocant,” because it reflects that you’re in demand, since someone is willing to relocate you. But according to our data, the share of these people is very small. Those whom employers actually hired and relocated, providing them with a package of services including hiring and housing, are an absolute minority. The very term “relocants” is misleading, because it attributes more privilege to the whole group than may actually exist. There’s even a kind of judgment built into the word: the implication that these are people who don’t need and don’t deserve empathy or support, because they can survive on their own.

The way we — researchers, journalists, or states — sort people shapes narratives. And these are dangerous because we build cause-and-effect chains from them, which then translate into specific countries’ political decisions. If Russians are “relocants,” then they’re not entitled to any help. And conversely, you also can’t call everyone refugees, because refugees are, first and foremost, Ukrainians. And then a kind of moral economy kicks in: whose suffering is more important and deserves more attention.

There are other self-designations too: many call themselves a “global citizen,” a “citizen of the world.” In English there’s the word exile and the phrase person in exile. These are the terms we actually use in the book.

— What themes and issues come up most often in the words of the migrants you’ve spoken with?

— In addition to the surveys, we collected 581 interviews with Russians who ended up in more than 60 countries. And at least back in 2023–2024, the country of residence didn’t have that much effect on how people talked about themselves. There was also a lot of dark humor: people often resort to memes and self-deprecation to describe their often difficult situation.

— How successfully are Russians adapting abroad?

— In the first two years of the [full-scale] war, according to our surveys, two-thirds of the people who left in 2022 and had previously worked for Russian companies (including remotely) left those jobs and were able to find new ones. But it’s worth remembering that a fairly large share of Russians who left work in the IT sector, where, at least until the AI boom, things were pretty good. People employed in science and teaching had it hardest of all: finding work abroad is very difficult for them.

— Do emigrants often integrate into local society, or do they more often end up strictly within their own community?

— Based on the material from our 2023 interviews, we can say that people don’t learn the host country’s language well. The first survey data showed that everyone was rushing to learn Georgian, Armenian, or whatever language [of the country] they’d moved to. But over time, most Russians have continued to stay within the Russian-speaking community, even if they think that’s the wrong thing to do.

Yet Russians are often accused of not forming diasporas, even though those who left after 2022 are actually successfully creating groups where they communicate with each other. This community is united by a shared moral shock and by being against the war. And earlier waves of emigration — in the 1990s, for instance — didn’t have that kind of unifying foundation. In this wave of migration we see almost no desire to distance oneself from one’s compatriots, and that’s a very significant shift.

— In one of your papers there’s a concept called discordant privilege, a phenomenon where a migrant’s identity seems to split in two. Can you tell us about this idea?

— This concept comes up in the article about Kyrgyzstan. The thing is, our respondents sometimes “jokingly” mentioned a ranking of countries where you could end up. The coolest ones were, say, Luxembourg, Switzerland, probably the United States. And at the very bottom was Kyrgyzstan. On one hand, you can see an element of disrespect and a colonial attitude toward less economically prosperous countries in this. On the other, this hierarchy reflects internal inequality among those who left themselves. Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and it’s naive to assume that the people who left it are all the same. Not everyone is an IT worker with [a monthly salary of] $5,000. Kyrgyzstan often became the destination for people who, for example, couldn’t move to European Union countries because they lacked connections.

So, we had one interview in Kyrgyzstan where a person who had left Russia quickly found work in healthcare, because Russian-language medicine is in high demand there. He arrived with a sense of “I’m a colonizer, someone who should treat this former Soviet country carefully.” But to his surprise, he was treated with great respect. So discordant privilege is the mismatch between how you’re seen in the host country and how you assume you’ll be seen. You move from one hierarchy into another and have to reconcile your previous position with the positions of the host society.

— It sounds like you’re describing a kind of logic of deservingness and guilt — that you have to prove you hold the “right” antiwar views in order to be accepted in a country. Is that something Russian emigrants experience?

— Yes, many Russians who left retain a sense of guilt in Thomas Mann’s understanding of the term. If we ask respondents in a survey who bears responsibility for the war, most will say: we’re guilty, Russia is guilty. But interestingly, when we start unpacking that emotion in interviews (what exactly should you atone for, and to whom?), a lot of nuance emerges. A person can fully acknowledge that a crime is taking place while denying individual guilt. Many interviewees insist that the host country should judge them only by their individual actions, not by their Russian passport.

Do emigrants believe they’ll ever return home

— How has emigrants’ perception of the war changed over the past year compared to 2022?

— Data comes in very slowly, and I don’t have anything new for 2026. I can point to not-yet-published information from our study in Armenia (though, of course, that can’t give us a complete picture of all emigrants). Overall, attitudes toward the war haven’t changed. It remains a common view that Russia should bear responsibility for rebuilding Ukraine if there’s ever some kind of peace process.

Meanwhile, skepticism toward the West is growing. There’s a study, for example, of Russians in the United States and Poland that confirms disillusionment with democracy in the host countries. The processes underway, especially in America in connection with ICE’s work, are causing many to become disillusioned with European–American democracy. And in Europe we’re also seeing a powerful anti-migration turn. It’s not connected to Russians, but they too are getting swept up in that same vortex and are becoming victims of the rightward shift in European politics.

— It seems like among those who left for political reasons, there are more and more people experiencing apathy and, conversely, withdrawing from politics. How accurate is that?

— Yes, that’s absolutely true. A colleague and I recently published a paper looking at how people demobilize. Among our respondents were people who blossomed after emigrating and became more involved in volunteering: helping the homeless or organizing fundraisers. But more people who had actively participated in political initiatives became demobilized.

The first reason is emotional burnout. My colleagues published a detailed paper on this in 2025, with testimony from Russian emigrants. People burn out in a stream of bad news with no light at the end of it. They’re squeezed on one side by host countries, where they must constantly prove they’re not a security threat or simply maintain their legal status, and on the other by the need to keep thinking about possible threats from their own country. It’s a psychologically unhealthy situation.

The second reason is financial. Activists, media outlets, and human rights advocates lost their sources of support when the largest American donors and many other sponsors withdrew their backing. They’ve had to reinvent themselves in a new reality. The third reason is transnational repression. Many still have relatives and property, some continue traveling to Russia, and these serve as levers of pressure that hold people back.

The Russian diaspora isn’t unique in this respect. If you look at other studies — for example, on the diaspora of people who left Turkey, since Erdogan also triggered several waves of academics and activists leaving the country — you’ll see that the more time passes, the more people demobilize, because they need to see light at the end of the tunnel. If that light isn’t particularly visible yet, people start switching to something else.

But that doesn’t mean no one is engaged in politics anymore. A great many people who left Russia continue to take part in civic initiatives in one way or another, often shifting to less visible forms of activity for safety reasons.

— Compared to 2022, do emigrants more often describe their departure as final? Do many say they won’t return to Russia even if the situation improves significantly? You’ve written that if a person has stayed in emigration for more than two years, the likelihood of returning drops significantly.

— When people are asked why they left and whether they want to return, they can say anything, because they often orient themselves around “correct” and “incorrect” answers. How people will actually behave is a separate, open question. But it really is true: if we understand anything about migration — any migration, not just Russian — the longer people stay abroad, the higher the likelihood they’ll remain there. Two years is more of a rough benchmark. The process can be nonlinear. But it’s roughly the amount of time in which a person can establish themselves in a new place — for example, finding a job and permanent housing.

There are people who left for political reasons who continue to live in Russia in their heads, even though they’re technically not there. For example, offices of many political and civic organizations in exile are located in Vilnius and Berlin. I imagine many people there go to work “in Russia.” Someone out there is surely still living out of a suitcase. There were very few of these people in our interviews, but they existed. One person said: “I still haven’t unpacked my suitcase. If something happens tomorrow, I can just grab it and fly back.” I don’t know if he’s still hasn’t unpacked his suitcase.

— Are there many among your respondents who say they’ve found a genuine new home in emigration?

— That happens, but it’s rare. For most people, the dominant trope is that of the guest, a motif of gratitude and hospitality toward the host country: “We really appreciate that we’re tolerated here.” But the specific sense that this is my new home is rare. Rather, respondents have a sense that they’re gradually getting used to it, which sounds more like resignation.

But the good news is that Russians in emigration have managed to build many communities. And that, I think, is a major breakthrough. I remember when I first flew to the United States as a student in the early 2000s, I met a Soviet migrant who told me: “If you need help, never approach someone who speaks Russian. Better to ask an American for help.” His words, that level of distrust toward what were nominally his own people, really surprised me.

But after 2022, Russians in emigration, united by shared misfortune and shared trauma, displayed forms of civic behavior every bit as strong as those of citizens of any advanced democratic country. For example, they’ve created aid projects like Kovcheg, Emigration for Action, and Idite Lesom [“Get Lost,” an organization assisting Russian deserters]. They cooperate with activists in host countries and open bookstores selling Russian-language books, like Babel in Berlin. Places like these serve as gathering points for the community.

Therefore, when someone says there’s something wrong with our civil society, I want to respond: “We’re fine. The problem isn’t us, or at least, not only us.”