And IntelliJ IDEA of course, which I think many HN visitors are using in one form or another. This still doesn't change the original point that Putin regime has been very damaging to Russia.

It's true that Jetbrains has lots of developers in Russia, but Jetbrains s.r.o is Czech and was founded in Prague under the name Intellij Software.

Please.

jetbrains is a russian company with russian owners. The very fact they (similarly to wargaming of belarus) etablished venues in czech, cyprus etc, were:

1. to whitewash 'russia' label from they brand

2. to avoid potential economic sanctions (esp. post 2014 and Crimea)

3. tax evasion (yeah, cyprus is hq, truly like egshell apple/google ireleand is not for tax evasion)

4. able to recruit some westerners which were needed for sales/marketing to out-of-russia markets (skills, local market, local connections).

to make it clear: I consider both products really good, and both companies successfull and well managed on a worldwide scale. They success can be also measured by the very fact that you fell prey to their marketing strategy 'we're not russian company'. they are.

JetBrains has this name this because they were brains jetting from Russia. All founders were Russians, of course.

Was it more or less damaging then the tire-pyre disaster that the country went through in the 90s, prior to him taking power?

That's when my family left, and while my remaining relatives have soured against Putin in recent years (Funny how that happened... They were all for him, right up until ~2017, or so), nobody feels nostalgic for the 90s.

Let's not whitewash history. The Russian public has only recently started souring on him. The brain drain didn't start because of him - it started 28 years ago, as soon as the borders were opened.

And the drain stopped because he worked hard to eliminate poverty and bring stable relations with the rest of the world? Nope.

So brain drain became even more of a problem under his rule.