Mobilization-Driven Emigration of Russians to CIS Countries Helping Moscow Reclaim Influence There, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, Dec. 1 – Most analysts Russian and otherwise have seen the massive outflow of Russians because of Putin’s war in Ukraine and his partial mobilization effort as having serious costs on Russia, a brain drain in fact from which the country will have difficulty recovering anytime soon.

But one Russian commentator, Aleksandr Shustov, says that the new emigration may help Moscow at least in the former Soviet republics. At the very least, he argues this is something the Russian authorities should be sensitive to (ritmeurasia.org/news--2022-12-01--masshtabnaja-antivoennaja-emigracija-vygodna-rossii-63346).

Most of the Russians who have moved abroad since February, he points out, have moved to CIS member countries; and because they have led to a growth in the ethnic Russian population in places where it had been declining, they have “initiated a revival of the process of the Russification of the near abroad.”

“Under ordinary conditions,” Shustov says, “there are no stimuli for Russians to move to the republics of the former USSR and as a result, the ethnic Russian population and also the Russian-language cultural milieu would continue to decline. Now, however, there are great chances for forming on the perimeter of the southern Russian borders ‘new Russian diasporas.’”

These diasporas, he insists, “inevitably although unwillingly will become carriers of cultural influence and thus be a form of Russian ‘soft power’” It is interesting that any Russian commentator would make that argument because it will likely have the unintended consequence of making these countries less willing to take in new Russian immigrants.

If the governments and peoples of these countries believe that Moscow plans to use such Russians abroad for Moscow and against them, they are certain to become more hostile to the arrival of such people and more selective about whom they will allow in and whom they will turn away.

Indeed, it is possible that Shustov’s article is designed to do just that, prompting other countries to take actions that will make it less necessary for Moscow itself to impose restrictions on emigrating by having other countries increase restrictions on their entrance and remaining there.