Moscow’s Hopeful People Are Running from Russia

MOSCOW — In that moment, it hit me just how quickly things had gone wrong. Karen Shainyan, my most optimistic friend, whose eyes always reflected confidence and courage, had stayed optimistic on the darkest days—when members of the Chechen LGBT community were rounded up and tortured, when the authorities designated independent media as “foreign agents”Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader was still alive when he was poisoned. He was arrested and sentenced for years in prison. Now, his eyes were filled fear. On Sunday, I witnessed him terrorized for the first time. “Everything we hoped for is falling apart, all our dreams. We have to run,”He stated.

It took many decades for the Russian middle class to develop into what we know today. It was destroyed in just a few days. The exodus began. Journalists, businessmen, artists, popular TV presenters, pop stars – some of Russia’s most talented professionals were fleeing the country.

Before the war Shainyan had two little sons — one in Kyiv and another in Moscow. They had become political symbols of one kind. A few days before Shainyan and I spoke at the crowded Flaner restaurant in Kitai Gorod, Moscow hipsters’ favorite neighborhood, Putin decided to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine. Putin stated in his speech: “I hope that the Russian population would support me.”Shainyan, one of the first Russian bloggers to appear online, was among them. We spoke out: “No fuck, not a single reasonable Russian is going to support it,”He posted a photo of the two boys and wrote it. “What he declares promises only death, poverty and horrible reputational losses.”

Shainyan, a few days later, realized how badly authorities wanted to crack down against all dissenters. Everyone who spreads information will be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment “fake news.”

The House of Cards, which Moscow displayed to the world through its large, elegant windows, was crumbling outside. People waited in line at the bank at Myasnitskaya Avenue. To save their money, they searched for cash at ATMs. It was the seventh anniversary since the assassination Boris Nemtsov, and a rally was planned in the center of the city. An actor friend called from Saint Petersburg to inform him that the world-famous Kirov theater was laying off staff in both the orchestra and the ballet troupe. He was hoping to catch a train to Finland — and praying the Finns still let Russians in on tourist visas.

Russians stopped posting selfies. Instead of posting pictures of fabulous interior design and delicious food, Russian social networks were full of horrifying videos featuring bleeding women, destroying buildings and even capturing Russian soldiers. From bomb shelters and metros, crying Ukrainians called well-known Russian friends. They begged Putin for help.

For a while, it looked as though Shainyan might have been prophetic. In at least 40 cities, Russians protested against the war. However, the demonstrations were chaotic. Moskivites ran wild on the streets and squares seeking shelter from policemen. Police detained more than 6,000 anti-war protesters — popular artists, television presenters, directors of leading Russian theaters. Opposition to the war in Ukraine was voiced by politicians and even oligarchs. But, then something terrible happened.

Russia’s prosecutor general banned the Echo of Moscow radio station —the one that aired news from Ukraine frontlines day and night — as well as the only television channel, Rain, that still broadcasted voices of the opposition. Tikhon Daziadko (editor-in-chief, Rain TV) was present in the studio when a security guard came with a warning: police were coming. Dziadko ordered everyone to evacuate immediately. After all reporters escaped the Rain’s newsroom, Palonsky asked the building’s security about the exact words in the threat. “He told me the threatening message sounded ‘blurry,’ it wasn’t clear if it was coming from police or thugs,”Vasily Palonsky was one of the Rain TV presenters, which I heard from him in an interview on Thursday.

Every time something terrible happens — when Putin’s critics go to jail, get poisoned or shot, say — Russians bring up the symbolic date of 1937. There had never been a darker period in Russian history than the Great Purge, the peak of political repressions, when Josef Stalin’s NKVD arrested more than a million people and executed hundreds of thousands. Shainyan hated this comparison, for one. It started to feel more fitting, even to Shainyan, this week. It was hard not to draw comparisons between the Duma’s proposals to punish all war critics with 15 years of jail for “fake news” and Stalin’s repressions. Everybody knew how dark and how horrible things could get. It was a matter now of survival whether you wanted to flee or remain.

Thursday was a chaotic day for the city. “Even if you told me yesterday morning that I should leave, I would not have listened to you. But now all of us either face conscription [into the military] or 15 years behind bars,” Shainyan told me on Thursday, boarding the plane with his boyfriend. Some mothers tried convincing their sons not to run. Others begged their boys not to abandon them. “This is going to be worse than the USSR. Putin will never stop fighting,”Svetlana Ozerova (a Kitai Gorod nurse) told me.

Dziadko’s wife, Rain anchor Katerna Kotrikadze and their children fled to Istanbul Tuesday. They were targets after receiving threatening messages. “When we came back from Russia in 2019 to work at the only opposition television channel, we knew that by supporting [opposition leader] Aleksei Navalny we risked a lot,” Dziadko told me. “And even after authorities designated our channel as a ‘foreign agent,’ we kept our great, brave team and continued to work for our huge audience. But after Putin sent forces to Ukraine, we realized the situation completely came out of control. Now, Putin is totally unpredictable.”

Many Russian journalists panicked. People evacuated without time to pack — or think of the future. On Thursday morning, Palonsky, one of the best reporters Rain has, popped into his Surf coffee shop at Flakon, a converted factory space that had become a hipster haven — and a kind of second office for Rain TV. He grabbed his favorite cup of coffee. “I am such a typical hipster,”He laughed and spoke out about his decision to stay or go. “I simply cannot abandon my mother, my grandmother and other women in my family, so I am staying. I’m not sure if this is the biggest mistake. Maybe tomorrow, you call me and hear that I am out of Russia.”

Thursday night was chaotic. People kept messaging one another with variations of the same question. “Have you crossed the border? Are you out?”On Friday morning, I received a message by Shainyan: “Everything is OK, we are in Ulan-Ude,”A city in eastern Siberia. Shainyan was gone, that fearless voice. I messaged Palonsky asking: Have you stayed? “Yup,”He responded. At least a few devoted journalists have remained — and while they are in Russia, there is a tiny hope.