Number of Russians Now Thinking about Emigrating has Tripled from a Year Ago, Online Searches and Passport Applications Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 17 – The number of Russians thinking about emigrating has tripled in the first quarter of this year compared to a year ago, to judge from visits to websites about how to do it and applications for foreign passports as well as from the judgments of groups that help those who want to do so.

            These figures are available at verstka.media/rossiyane-nachali-chashhe-iskat-kak-uehat-iz-strany, verstka.media/v-krupnyh-gorodah-okazalis-peregruzheny-otdely-mvd-vydayushhie-zagranpasporta and istories.media/stories/2026/04/17/v-rossii-rastet-interes-k-emigratsii-vpervie-za-neskolko-let-kuda-seichas-proshche-vsego-uekhat/.

            After the dramatic spike in emigration in response to the threat of mobilization at the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, interest in emigration among Russians fell sharply not only because it became more difficult as fewer countries displayed an interest in receiving Russians but also because the war itself was normalized.

            But increasing repression, economic decline and the Kremlin’s attacks on the Internet appear to be leading to another increase in the outflow of Russians; and that confronts the Kremlin with a new challenge about how it should respond to limit such flows without making its own situation still worse.

            Ilya Grashchenkov, the head of the Moscow Center for Regional Politics, suggests figures about interest in emigration, largely the result of the Kremlin’s economic failures and attacks on the Internet, highlight a problem that the Putin regime has not faced in anything like the same size before (t.me/kremlebezBashennik/45617).

            “Judging by the latest data,” he says, “the authorities now face a situation where their customary logic in which prohibitions automatically translate into public acquiescence no longer works” and Russians instead are seeking ways to resist or at least avoid having to comply, including such radical steps as leaving the country.

            According to Grashchenkov, Russian society “is beginning to tire—not so much of the harshness itself, but rather of the sense that restrictions are multiplying while no horizon for improvement appears.” This is most likely to lead the Kremlin to seek some kind of balance “between security and frustration,” lest the public’s mood deteriorates further.

            But of course, Putin may choose “further tightening the screws … if the logic of security remains the top priority”  and if the Kremlin leader decides that the declines in public support for him aren’t a signal of the need for a course correction but rather a justification for the imposition of even stricter controls” despite the possibility that could backfire.