Yerevan, Armenia — For Evgeniy Sergeev, a 30-year-old Russian lawyer who abruptly left his Moscow apartment a few weeks ago, his country’s invasion of Ukraine felt like a betrayal.
“We have a common history and culture. What Russia is doing is a crime and the authorities should be held accountable,” he said, speaking haltingly in English.
He was detained twice while protesting against Putin’s regime and had to pay fines. Then fearing Russia’s new infamous law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading “fake” information about the war, he and his younger brother fled their homeland for Armenia at the beginning of April.
Sergeev is just one of tens of thousands of Russians who fled their country. Between Jan. 1 and April 1, nearly 142,000 of them crossed the border into Armenia, compared to just over 43,000 last year, according to Armenia’s Migration Service.
Sergeev says he had to leave Russia because he is “a traitor to the authorities’ eyes” and risks jail for showing support toward Ukraine and helping friends trapped in the country.
“I thought it would be more pragmatic to leave the country and help from abroad,” he says.
His suitcases filled with clothes, tobacco and a few books, he landed in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.
Most of the Russian newcomers are in their 20s and 30s. Speaking Russian while walking, they are easily recognizable in Yerevan’s streets. They established their quarters in coffee shops, bars and restaurants. They are also flooding dating apps and they post stories on Instagram, posing in abandoned locations and in front of concrete walls smeared with graffiti. The price of rent skyrocketed in the city, and landlords are increasingly evicting Armenian tenants to attract wealthier Russians who can pay top dollar for rent.
National Post met Sergeev for the first time in a café popular with Russian newcomers, located in a small garage in an unassuming alley behind Saryan Street, a trendy downtown thoroughfare teeming with wine bars, restaurants and bakeries. He just had a meeting with two other Russians and a Ukrainian, to organize help for Ukrainian refugees.
“It’s important to create a community where everybody can speak their mind and develop ways to help,” says one of the organizers, Marika Semenenko, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who left Moscow recently after campaigning for years against Putin’s regime. They are now renting a small warehouse for their activities.
But why not continue to fight from within Russia?
“The war was my limit,” she replies.
Her father is from Ukraine, and she could not justify to her Ukrainian friends — and to herself — why she was staying. “I cannot live in a country which kills Ukrainians. They are killing my identity,” she says.
Many in Yerevan have stories about friends — or themselves — who got detained over nothing, or were paid a visit by the police or the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The gap between them and some of their Ukrainian friends nonetheless grew wider with time. Some are advocates of banning Russian nationals from international competitions and gatherings like cultural events, and think defectors should take more risk and protest more forcefully in Russia.
“Maybe the Ukrainian government will let me in when the war is over, and give me citizenship, because my country betrayed me,” hopes Sergeev. But he concedes that not all Ukrainians may welcome him.
Russians’ family ties are also strained thanks to clashes with their parents and grandparents, who only watch official Russian propaganda channels.
Sergey, a 23-year-old who does not wish to be identified, is now in Yerevan after the U.S.-based IT company he is working for asked its employees to relocate. While some of his colleagues are indifferent to the invasion of Ukraine, he is critical of Vladimir Putin.
“My family calls me the ‘national traitor’. Half-jokingly, but I know they mean it in part,” he says.
He reads independent websites, unlike his family. “I try to show my mom what’s really going on in Ukraine, but the sites are blocked by Russia and she won’t install a VPN,” he says. She thinks he is a victim of “Western propaganda.”
But the tensions could be worse, and his parents were sad when he left. “I’m still a member of the family,” he says. “But for me, emotionally, it would be easier if they didn’t love me and rejected me.”
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