Russia suffers a brain drain and other countries seek to take advantage of talent that escapes Putin

Russian tech workers are looking for safer professional grounds.

According to one estimate, up to 70,000 computer scientists, frightened by the sudden freezing of the business and political climate, have left Russia since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine five weeks ago. Many more are expected to follow.

For some countries, the loss of Russia is seen as a potential gain and an opportunity to bring new knowledge to their own high-tech industries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has noticed the brain drain even in the midst of a war that, according to the UN refugee agency, has led to the flight of more than 4 million people from Ukraine and the displacement of millions more within the country.

This week, Putin reacted to the exodus of technology professionals by passing a law to eliminate income taxes until 2024 for people working in information technology companies.

Some of the new hi-tech exiles say they are in no hurry to return home. An elite with European Union visas has moved to Poland or to the Baltics from Latvia and Lithuania.

A larger contingent has taken refuge in countries where Russians do not need visas: Armenia, Georgia and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. In normal times, millions of less skilled workers migrate from those economically weak countries to comparatively more prosperous Russia.

Anastasia, a 24-year-old independent computer systems analyst from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, chose Kyrgyzstan, where her husband has family.

“When we heard about the war (February 24), we thought it was probably time to leave, but that we could wait and see. On February 25, we bought the tickets and left,” said Anastasia. “You didn't have to think much.”

Like all the Russian workers contacted for this report, Anastasia asked to remain anonymous. Moscow was repressing dissent even before the invasion of Ukraine, and people living outside Russia continue to fear reprisals.

“Ever since I can remember, there has always been a fear of expressing one's own opinions in Russia,” said Anastasia, adding that war and “the background noise of patriotism” made the environment even more prohibitive. “I left the day before they started searching and questioning people at the border.”

The magnitude of the apparent brain drain was revealed last week by Sergei Plugotarenko, director of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, an industry lobby group. “The first wave, of 50,000 to 70,000 people, has already left,” Plugotarenko told a parliamentary committee.

Only the high cost of flights to leave the country has prevented an even greater mass departure. Yet another 100,000 tech workers could leave Russia in April, Plugotarenko predicted.

Konstantin Siniushin, managing partner of Untitled Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital fund based in Latvia, said Russian tech companies with international clients had no choice but to relocate, as many foreign companies are hurriedly distancing themselves from everything related to Russia.

“They have had to leave the country for their business to survive or, in the case of research and development workers, they have been relocated to headquarters,” Siniushin wrote in email statements.

Untitled Ventures is helping with migration; the company charted two flights to Armenia with 300 tech workers from Russia, Siniushin said.

Some nearby countries are eager to reap the dividends.

Russian talent is ready for poaching. A report on the Global Skills Index 2020 published by Coursera, a leading provider of open online courses, found that people in Russia scored the highest in mastery of skills in technology and data science.

As soon as the invasion of Ukraine began, the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan radically streamlined the process of obtaining work visas and residence permits for IT specialists.

Anton Filippov, a mobile application programmer from St. Petersburg, and the team of freelancers he works with moved to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, where he grew up, even before those incentives were made public.

“On February 24, it was as if we had awakened to this different terrible reality,” Filippov said. “We are all young, we are less than 27 years old, and that is why we were afraid that we would be called up to participate in this war.”

As the most in-demand tech workers explore their options, their diaspora resembles a traveling caravan. Some countries, such as Uzbekistan, are chosen as a springboard because Russian citizens do not need visas for short-stay stays. But young professionals like Filippov don't necessarily plan to stay in the place where they first landed.

“If the conditions they encounter differ from what they were promised, they will just leave,” he said.

In many cases, entire companies seek to relocate to avoid the consequences of international sanctions. A senior diplomat from another neighboring country of Russia, Kazakhstan, this week called on foreign companies fleeing sanctions to come to his country.

Kazakhstan looks with special interest to high-tech investors as the country tries to diversify its economy, which relies on oil exports. In 2017, the government created a technology park in the capital, Nur-Sultan, and offered tax breaks, preferential loans and grants to anyone willing to settle there.

So far, the reception has been moderate, but the hope is that the Russian brain drain will give a big boost to this initiative.

“The accounts of Russian companies are being frozen, and their transactions are not carried out. They try to keep customers, and one of the opportunities available is to go to Kazakhstan,” says Arman Abdrasilov, president of Zerde Holding, an investment fund in Almaty, Kazakhstan's business center.

However, not all countries are so eager.

“Russian companies cannot settle in Lithuania,” says Inga Simanonyte, advisor to the Minister of Economy and Innovation of the Baltic country. “We are not working with any Russian company on their possible move to Lithuania, and the ministry has suspended all visa applications for startups since February 24.”

Concerns about security and the suspicion that Russians may spy or engage in cyber mischief abroad make some governments wary of hosting the country's economic refugees.

“The information technology sector in Russia is closely related to security services. The problem is that, without an extremely robust investigative process, we run the risk of importing parts of Russia's criminal system,” Lithuanian political analyst Marius Laurinavicius told AP.

Siniushin, managing partner of Untitled Ventures, urges Western countries to open their doors so that their employers can take advantage of the unusual recruitment opportunity created by the war.

“The more talent Europe or the United States can draw from Russia today, the more benefits these new innovators will bring to other countries, whose potential will be fully developed abroad,” he said.

(By Luidas Dapkus - AP)

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