Putin’s war driving Ukrainians and Russians alike to flee their countries

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More than two million people have fled Ukraine. Amid a brutal crackdown on civil liberties, their military bombing maternity wards, their economy imploding, and the imposition of extreme media censorship, millions will soon be leaving Russia. In fact, it has already started.  -  

LONDON — Aglaia woke in the early hours to find that war had begun. 

Her friend was packing to leave the country, so she rushed to her parents’ house and implored them to do the same. 

Aglaia, 23, isn’t from Kyiv, Kharkiv or any other Ukrainian city under attack. She was in St. Petersburg, Russia, more than 500 miles from the fighting. 

Her relatives are among tens of thousands of people estimated to have escaped the increasingly hard-line oppression meted out by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime as he tries to crush any opposition to his struggling invasion. She asked not to be identified by her last name for fear of reprisals by Russia's state security services if she ever returns home. 

With Russia cracking down on dissent and being hit with more international sanctions than Iran and North Korea, some fear a new “Iron Curtain” may be closing as Putin leaves his country deeply isolated both culturally and economically from a scornful world. 

“We were very scared,” said Aglaia, a student and activist who managed to get a rare plane ticket Thursday with her family to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, one of the few nearby places where Russian flights aren’t banned. “We just had this feeling of deep, deep sadness — but also mixed with anger.” 

The war’s greatest toll has been on Ukraine, where Russian bombs and shells have killed civilians, leveled residential areas and forced more than 2 million people to flee. But it has disfigured the landscape of Russia in a different way. 

Younger liberals, like Aglaia, describe a country closing in on itself as the regime wields Orwellian totalitarian tactics so brutal that they outstrip anything seen during Putin’s two decades in power. (Read more)

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