Using the same kind of rough street language he used 22 years ago when talking about rubbing out Chechen rebels even when they’re in their “outhouses,” Russian President Vladimir Putin midweek took aim at Russians who oppose his invasion of Ukraine, saying Russia should undergo “self-cleansing” and get rid of “bastards and traitors.”

“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths, spit them out on the sidewalk,” he said.

An estimated 200,000 Russians have not waited to be spat out and have left Russia already. Thousands more are planning to leave. Most Russians who have already exited have gone to Armenia, Georgia and Turkey, the easiest countries to reach as airline bans were imposed. Russians also don’t need visas to enter any of the three.

Many of the new Russian exiles contacted by VOA say they chose exile because they felt they had to demonstrate opposition to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor; others feared remaining in a Russia isolated from most of the rest of the world. Still others said they fled because they feared if they stayed, they would fall afoul of the Kremlin’s intensifying crackdown on dissent and end up in jail.

“I realized I could not stay in Russia. I knew I couldn’t be silent,” says Katya, a 27-year-old, who worked in Russia as a PR manager and game blogger. “So, there were two ways: stay in Russia and be imprisoned, or express myself abroad. I also think I can do more in other countries than in prison,” she added.

Untouchables

The new exiles classify themselves as political refugees, but even so — despite being critics of the invasion of Ukraine and deeply opposed to Putin — many say they’re encountering hostility abroad. And they say not enough media attention is being given to their plight. They complain Russia’s pariah status has turned them into untouchables, too.

“Now the whole world hates us,” says Alexandra, 39, a Russian who was born in Tajikistan and whose family fled to Moscow in the 1990s because of the Tajik civil war. She was 7 years old then, and she remembers “how my parents tried not to panic, but my mother could not hold back her tears when we had to leave her books. My library was much more modest, but it was hard to leave my books. I sobbed and remembered my mother,” she said.

Now in Tbilisi, Alexandra says: “I did not choose this [Putin] government, I went to all the rallies, donated to human rights organizations, and attended court trials of political prisoners. But for the whole world now, I am a representative of fascists who, to my great regret, ended up in power in my country.”

Some Russian refugees say they feel guilty complaining about their plight — after all despite what they have lost, from the physical proximity of family, homes and jobs and a settled way of life, they acknowledge they are citizens of a country that invaded a neighbor where people are losing their lives. Even so, they remain shocked at the hostility openly expressed towards them.

Nadya, who was the head of marketing team in Kaluga, a town in western Russia, says she was surprised by the Russophobia she’s encountered in Georgia since arriving in Tbilisi. She says she and her husband know Georgia well, having vacationed in the country every year for the past half-decade. “Never before have we encountered discrimination against Russians — on the contrary we have always been welcome guests here. But we have been deeply struck by how quickly a wave of Russophobia rose among the Georgians,” she says.

“Many Georgians have this logic: if you are against Putin, you should be in Russia now and fighting him there; and they are also afraid that since we have arrived, Russian troops will come to ‘save us’. They blame us for the aggression of the Russian authorities, but we are also victims of this war, just on the other side of the front,” she added.

She notes Ukrainians are “now living through events thousand times more monstrous” than what the Russian refuseniks are suffering, and she stressed it right for everyone to try to help the embattled Ukrainians. “But we did not vote for Putin; we fought against him in every possible way the last 10 years,” she adds.

Aside from anti-Russian hostility in Tbilisi, Istanbul and Yerevan, Russian refugees say they are facing practical challenges. Their Russian bank cards don’t work; it is difficult to find accommodation to rent; jobs are in short supply; and their savings have halved in value thanks to the collapse of the ruble. Dozens of chat channels have sprung up on social-media platforms, such as Telegram, for the new political exiles to swap tips and information.

Activists are also organizing meetings. “It’s important now to be together,” says Alexey. “It helps to overcome all this nightmare, I feel this unity,” he adds.

As they try to get their footing and adjust to their new lives and attenuated circumstances, the refuseniks also appear to be struggling with guilt for what Russia has unleashed on Ukraine and grief for what they have lost.

Lost world

“I had established a comfortable life in Moscow,” says Alexandra, the Tajikistan-born Russian. “All this changed on February 24. The main fear is of never being able to return home to Russia. I also worry about loved ones who cannot or don’t want to leave. It is obvious that the standard of living will fall sharply. Russia is becoming a cross between North Korea, Venezuela and Germany in the 1930s. Understanding this is completely unbearable,” she adds.

But for her the strongest emotion is one of dread. “I can’t believe there’s a war going on. That my country unleashed this war. That we are at war with close neighbors,” she says.

Anton, a 42-year-old Muscovite and father of a four-year-old boy, shares the same sense of overwhelming horror. “My wife and I left Russia because it became impossible to stay in a country that sends people to kill other people, officially claiming creepy and terrible and nonsense grounds for doing so,” he told VOA from the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

“Of course, I was concerned about what work I could do outside Russia. I’m not ready for unskilled labor. I have to support my family. But I cannot be with people who do not admit aggression anymore. For me, it’s clear now we, like Germans, will repent for generations. It is Fascism 2.0,” he said.

Anton said he was nervous they would not get out of Russia. “I was not sure until our plane took off,” he says. He had heard FSB intelligence officers were searching people’s phones and laptops and were stopping people from leaving. “For us, it went easily, but I was still pretty nervous,” he says. He says he has no future plans, and they will have to live off savings when he loses a remote job he has with a European firm, which will happen soon. “I cannot predict what might happen next, so we will take this time to lie low, watch what comes and try to figure out what to do with our torn lives,” he says.

Anastasia, a 23-year-old Muscovite, who has launched one of the most popular Telegram channels for Russian expats in Georgia, says she didn’t have time to think about what exile would mean as she rushed to flee. “Standing finally under a warm shower, I slowly begin to realize my position,” she said. “I am a political refugee [not officially, but actually]. In Moscow, before the war, I had everything, now I have arrived with one suitcase and a backpack in a country where initially I knew no one,” she added.

“I huddle like a stray cat,” she says.

The mass exodus of Russians has now slowed thanks to travel obstacles. But the impact of devastating Western sanctions, along with the ever intensifying crackdown on freedom of speech and the criminalization of opposition to the war, as well as the prospects of job losses and poverty, is prompting thousands of others to plan an escape.

Western diplomats say their consulates in Russia are being inundated with visa requests. Wait times for visa appointments at Israel’s consulates are now running at eight months.

“For many Russians who do not support the war, it’s not safe to stay in Russia anymore,” says a Russian political activist. He worries, though, that the exodus of so many Putin opponents will weaken the opposition to the Kremlin.
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In the weeks before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to China for a meeting with President Xi Jinping in which they signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement aligning their countries in the ongoing struggle for global influence between Western democracies and rising authoritarian states.

Now, it’s not completely clear that China knew what it was getting into.

Three weeks after Xi put his name on the document declaring that friendship between Russia and China “has no limits” and “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation,” Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has turned Russia into an international pariah, facing devastating sanctions and condemnations from around the globe.

Diplomatic tightrope

For their part, Chinese diplomats have been attempting to walk a tightrope, making high-minded statements about the importance of peace and respect for other countries’ territorial integrity, while studiously avoiding any mention of the fact that it was China’s close ally that launched the bloody war raging in Ukraine.

Writing in The Washington Post on Tuesday, China’s ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, insisted that his country had been taken by surprise by the invasion. He sidestepped the question of whether Russia has requested weapons and other supplies from China, as a number of news outlets have reported.

China’s position on Ukraine, he wrote, is that “the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter must be fully observed; the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine, must be respected; the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be taken seriously; and all efforts that are conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be supported.”

Slight distancing

While China can’t be said to have distanced itself from Russia over the invasion, the comments by its senior leaders have also fallen short of an endorsement of Putin’s actions. This may reflect a desire to maintain relations with Moscow without damaging China’s reputation with the rest of the world, according to analysts.

“This new partnership agreement that Putin and Xi signed on February 4 certainly raised the possibility as this war rages that China could be judged guilty by association,” Stephen Roach,  a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, told VOA.

Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the California-based RAND Corporation, told VOA in an email that a desire to maintain good relations with the West may affect China’s willingness to provide assistance to Russia as the conflict continues.  

“I do not think China will change its pro-Russia stance any time soon, but it is likely to continue limiting how much help it provides Russia due to Beijing’s desire to maintain good relations with the West, which is far more important to China’s economic development than Russia,” he wrote.

Unexpected results

Experts say whether or not China knew what was coming in Ukraine, its leaders probably hoped Russia’s invasion would be over quickly.

“Perhaps Beijing was hoping for a short, sharp action through which the Russian military would roll over Ukrainian forces and annex the eastern part of Ukraine in the same manner as it did in the Crimea in 2014,” said Anthony Saich, a professor of international affairs and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

“In that scenario, Western outrage would have soon died down, and China would have continued undisturbed in its attempts to present a united front with Russia against a declining and divided West,” he told VOA. “The resistance of Ukrainian forces and its people has put an end to that illusion, and the West’s united and relatively strong response has changed the calculus.”

China’s leverage

Roach said China may have a better chance than any Western government at persuading Russia to change course.

“China is in a unique position because of its partnership agreement with Russia to exercise leverage over Vladimir Putin,” he said. “That is considerably greater than the sanctions that have been imposed by the U.S. and the West.

“Putin has not changed his military posture in response to unprecedented sanctions, and that’s a source of enormous frustration in the West. But China has something that the West does not have, and that is the partnership and the support that comes from that partnership. Russia is a tiny economy, it cannot possibly support a massive conventional war against a country like Ukraine, and it doesn’t have the wherewithal to do it.”

Robert Ross, a professor of political science at Boston College and an associate of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, said the United States could make the prospect of limiting support for Russia more attractive to China.

“There needs to be some way for America to signal China that there will be some appreciation for Chinese restraint and that the Americans would take this into account as we go forward, because they (China) want to be sure that there is a value in cooperating with America,” he said. “This is the price Americans pay because now, we’re asking for China’s cooperation in the ongoing crisis.”

VOA Mandarin Service reporters Si Yang and Lin Yang contributed to this story.
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine    
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Announcing tough sanctions against Russian oligarchs over the war in Ukraine was step one.

Now the U.S. and its allies are creating new teams to act on their vow to “seize and freeze” the giant boats, estates and other pricey assets of Russian elites.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday for the first time convened a multilateral task force known as REPO, one of several new efforts dedicated to enforcing sanctions.

REPO — short for Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs — will work with other countries to investigate and prosecute oligarchs and individuals allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The group is now looking into 50 individuals, with 28 names publicly announced.

The effort faces several challenges, including varying laws across countries that could make legal discovery difficult and the risk of penalizing innocent people whose property may be tied up in an oligarch’s seized assets.

And time presents a problem: Investigations can drag on for months and years.

Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and other counties are involved in trying to collect and share information against Russians targeted for sanctions, the White House said when it announced the formation of the task force.

It will work alongside another group called KleptoCapture, led by the Justice Department to enforce the economic restrictions within the U.S. imposed on Russia and its billionaires, working with the FBI, Treasury and other federal agencies.

The government says the sanctions imposed already have had a biting effect on the Russian economy.

Russia lost access to vital imports for its military gear and more than $600 billion in assets held by its central bank and faces ongoing rounds of targeted sanctions against companies and the wealthy elite who are tied to Putin.

The Russian stock market has yet to reopen since the sanctions began, while the ratings company Fitch said Russia would likely default if it used rubles to repay dollar-denominated debt due this week. The Institute of International Finance estimates that the Russian economy will shrink by 15% this year, instead of the 3% growth that was expected pre-invasion.

Andrew Adams, a federal prosecutor who is leading the KleptoCapture task force, stressed property seizures must be conducted within the law.

“You cannot just walk up and grab somebody’s yacht. You have to walk through the facts that link the property to a crime,” he told MSNBC in an interview this week. “You have to be able to describe not only what crime was committed with a degree of probable cause, but you have to trace the property to the condition of the crime.”

Ryan Fayhee, a former Justice Department prosecutor and current sanctions attorney at Hughes Hubbard & Reed in Washington, said “the challenge and the time involved with it is going to be demonstrating probable cause to actually justify a seizure.”

“This isn’t like a bank robbery,” Fayhee said, adding that the U.S. government is going to have to tie any potential actions to a U.S. criminal offense. “That’s going to be the challenge and it will take months or years — not days.”

On top of this, the complicated financial instruments that oligarchs invest in will inevitably draw everyday people into seizure actions, says Jonathan C. Poling, a former Justice Department prosecutor who works on sanctions and international trade issues for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in D.C.

The concern is how do governments impose sanctions “in a way that doesn’t punish innocent people” Poling said.

Both the REPO and KleptoCapture groups will use data analytics, cryptocurrency tracing, intelligence, and data from financial regulators to track sanctions evasion, money laundering and other criminal acts.

Dariya Golubkova, an international trade attorney at Holland & Knight, said cooperation between countries will be a benefit to sanctions enforcement, but there are countries that may be “missing from the international cooperation.”

Golubkova said countries that serve as havens to oligarch’s property will have to cooperate in REPO’s effort, or else sanctions will be less impactful.

The EU Tax Observatory think tank, associated with the Paris School of Economics, has called for a European Asset Registry to assist in sanctions efforts.

Golubkova also predicted that because countries have different search and seizure laws “some of these requirements may so mounting that you can’t get over them.” 
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