Most of those Russian expats are anti-Putin and anti-war. But I guess you don't care about that, as usual these days. We're the (old) new boogeyman, and this is Red Scare 2.0.

Yeah I had read that a good number of anti-war people had gone there both before and after mobilisation. In fact I was watching a video by the youtuber "nfkrz" (from Chelyabinsk, left after the invasion and now lives in Tbilisi) who made a really interesting point. You can still travel to the EU if you're a Russian passport holder, however you do still need to get a visa from the destination country's embassy inside Russia. So if you wanted no part in the war and made it across the border to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia or Armenia or wherever you are kinda stuck, you can't travel onwards to (say) Germany because that would mean returning to Russia and risking trouble especially if you were supposed to be mobilised.

Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia. If someone wants to not take part in a war, we should be making that easier for them as much as possible not harder or more dangerous :-/

I have (had?) a lot of friends there, some of whom have emigrated permanently, some have moved here to Kazakhstan when Putin declared his "partial mobilization", and have returned when it was declared over (although it isn't over legally…) If you haven't spoken up publicly against the war or did anything else that might endanger you personally, it has been quite safe to return to the country for the past few months. Of course, this could change in a moment — when rumors of upcoming mobilization started, my friends had less than a day to leave the country safely before the border service started selectively checking documents against mobilization lists.

> Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia

I haven't seen this sentiment outside of the few remaining oppositional Russian news outlets yet. I guess politicians will do politicians' things, and chauvinism sells better than compassion.

https://t.me/svtvnews/25254

> chauvinism sells better than compassion.

I was trying to make sense of this sentence and only understood you were upset with me once I read my comment back. It looks like you’ve parsed what I said as “we should only issue visas to Russians who left” but I meant “we should simply issue visas who left”. The word “just” is overloaded and makes it a little ambiguous :)

I think only a really ignorant person would think someone who deserves to be punished because of their nationality or country of residence.

I never said I don't care about that. But the situation is complicated. While many of those Russians align like you say, it doesn't change the fact that it remains a mix, that Russians have a heavy influence there, that there's tensions around that, and that alienating Russia or taking explicit anti-Putin positions is what the current Georgian gov't is currently trying to avoid.

In any case I genuinely feel for the Russian anti-war or opposition diaspora and don't hold bigoted anti-Russian positions like others on this thread might be showing. It's a complicated situation and indicative of the broader problems we'll see more and more of as empires and hegemonies built around domination of hydrocarbon exports become more volatile.

OK, that's fair, and I apologize for putting words in your mouth. It's been the default assumption lately, sadly.

I am from Kazakhstan, and our government has been in a position similar to what they're experiencing in Georgia. Lots of paranoia about Putin trying to stir up something here. To slow down immigration, they implemented some new anti-immigration laws that aren't targeted specifically at Russian citizens (although it quite obvious to everyone bothering to observe), so they pretty much can't stay here for more than a few months. But I guess Georgia depends on migrant's money much more than we do, so they can't simply do the same.