> Their borders are still pretty open, no?

Some people I know are leaving (though panic is never a good thing). Some told bizarre stories of how they were questioned at the border. And yes, some were asked to unlock and hand over their phones.

Yeah I just read some interviews with Russians fleeing to surrounding countries and they were afraid Putin had lost it and was returning to Soviet era tactics and the complete police state.

Yes and no. If you get too popular or too annoying, a bullet one morning will greet you on your way to work, many cases like that. Or some fabricated case and 10 years of hardcore ural prison.

The borders are open all right, no reason to close them. People opposing the regime are going away, the best possible outcome for dictator. No need to waste a lot of time and manpower on finding dissent if it just disappears on their own. And so population becomes a bit more docile, ignorant or even cooperating.

This was happening in former communist countries too - not everybody who spoke up against the regime went to jail. Some were just thrown to western Europe and forbidden to come back.

You have a weird way to tell history. People behind the iron curtain had no way to go to the west, and everybody wanted to. That is why they closed the borders.

When all young ambitious people leave, your country goes even more to shit than the shit it's already in. Of course they block the borders!

"Some were just thrown to western Europe and forbidden to come back. "

The active and popular rebels only.

The common dissident, was not free to leave, he had to shut up and work.

Yeah I think he has decided in his old age to just say "fuck it, we're going back to the Soviet Union"