[artyomxyz]

In some way you’re right. But it’s important to note that we haven’t chosen this government, we haven’t chosen this country we live in.

I personally lost any hope to change it one year earlier after participating in pro-Navalny protests. Now, I just don’t want to have anything in common with this government. I’m choosing another one. And I’m not going to pay taxes to Russian government anymore

[vertis]

This is wisdom. There are so many great countries out there (seen through the eyes of a digital nomad). Countries that you can build in, and succeed in.

I can recommend Estonia, though it might feel too close with the current war. Also I love all the Nordic countries (haven't had the opportunity to visit Finland yet).

If you speak English and you're in IT then Australia is also a very good option -- you'll need to be sponsored, but IT doesn't have too many troubles. Great weather and AU political problems are tiny in comparison (though every country has it's challenges).

[moonchrome]

>But it’s important to note that we haven’t chosen this government, we haven’t chosen this country we live in.

From my perspective this is the only meaningful change you can make. If my government ever starts getting in my way too much I'll find another one. Voting with my feet literally. We have this luxury as in-demand professionals. Kind of hard for me to empathize with Russian developers when they had decades to make this move, it's not like everything changed a few weeks ago.

[swat535]

As someone who lived under the Islamic Republic of Iran for half his life, what ends up happening with the "voting with your feet" strategy is that the country ends up with a "brain drain". This worsens the situation because the only people remaining are the ones who either had no means of escaping or have been indoctrinated by the government; thus making the change from "within" even more difficult.

That being said, it's hard to blame anyone. Staying and fighting leads to bloodshed, for example when the "green movement" started in Iran in 2009 [0] after the election, the government immediately started firing live rounds at people, arresting protestors and blacking out all communication from the outside world. Both my cousins were beaten in the Evin prison[1] for months and we were without any news from them for months.

Meanwhile, as a Middle Eastern living in the west, the hostility I experienced were enormous during those years and I expect the same to happen to Russian people now. Just look at the comments in the thread, much civility is already lost (and HN is one of the better communities).

Living under a dictatorship is suffocating. My heart goes out to all those suffering.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Green_Movement [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison

[mmarq]

> what ends up happening with the "voting with your feet" strategy is that the country ends up with a "brain drain". This worsens the situation because the only people remaining are the ones who either had no means of escaping or have been indoctrinated by the government; thus making the change from "within" even more difficult.

But at least you prevent said country from becoming a global threat. Russia minus its professional class would spiral into total irrelevance in a matter of weeks.

[skyde]

you said « Middle Eastern living in the west, the hostility I experienced were enormous «

Could you explain? I know people in usa are afraid of religious extremists. but I always assumed if you are comings from Iran, Liban, moroco … and speaking good english they will be friendly to you.

That is because majority of american don’t even know where on a map Iran is :-)

[dash2]

Even among developers not everyone is footloose. People have parents to take care of, they get married, they have dogs. Or they just care about their country even if they hate its government. Remember Leipzig in 1989? The first slogan was Wir wollen raus. But then it changed to Wir bleiben hier.

[SXX]

Yeah we (IT crowd of Russia) had time to leave and wanted to leave and planned to leave. But even as programmer it's can be just hard to immigrate without losing 3-5 years of your life in the middle. Also losing all you friends and social circle isn't fun. I already lived abroad for 3-months / 6-months / 3-years and I know what how it feels to move countries.

I personally had amazing personal projects going on and finally started to work in game development industry. My dream was to play games and make games. I wanted to get current projects to completion and then look for relocation options.

All these terrible events just taken us by surprise. A lot of my friends are anti-regime, but no one including me expected Putin to go batshit crazy and start full scale war. Of course all we could do is to run.

[moonchrome]

What do you mean losing years ? It might be a bit tough depending on visa issues and so on but none of my friends that emigrated describe it as losing years. They are all working in their field, some are progressing insanely in their careers (especially compared to how they were doing back home). I mean I know it's anecdotal, and I've read some horror stories about employer visa abuse but assuming that's the default is kind of cynical IMO.

[zelphirkalt]

Depending on the country you immigrate in, there might be a language barrier, general mistrust and many other issues like finding a place to live (flat, house, etc.). Some qualifications differ, but of course in IT the definitions of roles is a bit vague, so it is less of an impact. Generally Russian IT people have the a stereotype going for them, to be very capable, at least where I am from. Losing friends and contacts is also something that will take time to build up again.

[SXX]

What I mean by losing years: when you forcefully immigrate your primary goal becomes to keep your work visa or getting residence permit. You cant afford to work on exact same projects you wish, change jobs as you wish. Until you get permenent residence or citizenship - this takes 3-9 years depend on country.

Also lets be honest here - not all of us are top-notch programmers and finding job and passing interviews is completely different skill that need to be trained. I for instance simply don't have any official degree and while this make no difference for freelancer it's handicap me greatly when it's come to getting work visa.

Also even if I am programmer my girlfriend is not automatically become one too. Finding a good job for her as English teacher (who is not a native speaker) would be much harder in EU / US. So this will put extra strain on my an her life.

Rebuilding social circle and finding new friends also takes a long time. Especially if you dont want to stick to communities of other immigrants.

PS: now this all doesn't matter because we turned into refugees. Yeah we're in much better situation compared to my friends in Ukraine who wake up to bomb shells, but our past life is still destroyed by Mr Putin and his regime.

[novosel]

And, where will You find it? (The new government I mean)

Things are, The Reality is, much more complicated.

[freedomben]

Seconded. I'm in the US but I've looked into emigrating to quite a few different countries (including some with reputations for being more friendly to immigration such as Australia), and it's a lot harder than it sounds. I had a work visa in Canada for several months but then covid hit and they closed the border. Israel seemed like the easiest process I found, but only if you are Jewish (although temporary work permits are liberal there). The US also complicates things by being the only (?) nation on earth that still taxes it's citizens even if they didn't step foot in the country the whole year. This forces you to either renounce your citizenship entirely (which is extremely risky to do until you have permanent citizenship elsewhere, which can take many years), or be exploited by the US gov.

What countries are the best/easiest for immigration?

[lowkey]

Actually, it is currently impossible for US citizens to renounce their citizenship for all practical purposes.

Technically it should be possible but in reality renouncing requires an exit interview and the US State Department has refused to schedule exit interviews for more than a year.

[filoleg]

> This forces you to either renounce your citizenship entirely (which is extremely risky to do until you have permanent citizenship elsewhere, which can take many years)

Pretty much no country will let you renounce your citizenship until you already have a citizenship (not permanent residency, actual citizenship) of another country. This is done to prevent people from becoming "stateless". And the process for renouncing the US one is much simpler and easier compared to a lot of countries out there.

Not trying to be condescending or snarky here, but if that quote accurately represents the level of knowledge you have about immigration processes in general, I suggest you do way more research before you actually attempt to immigrate or even temporarily move to another country.

Source: me being a naturalized American citizen who has been (unsuccessfully) trying to get rid of his Russian citizenship for many years.

[moonchrome]

As a skilled developer ? Shouldn't be that hard - plenty of options to pick from. If you aren't fond of the US or EU there are other countries that have much better standard of living/ personal freedoms compared to Russia.

It's not easy in the sense that you'll just get a citizenship - but I have many former co-workers that went to Canada, US, Australia, etc., some got the permanent visa/citizenship, some are in the process.

[yc12340]

> As a skilled developer ? Shouldn't be that hard - plenty of options to pick from.

Maybe it used to be that way in the past, but not these days.

When I tried to go to Ireland a year ago, entering the country was impossible due to a multi-year long COVID travel ban. Schengen visas were useless — you needed a job offer AND a job permit just to enter the country.

I passed a bunch of interviews, received preliminary offer from one Irish company, but got rejected during security screening (I have never learnt why). Decided against trying again, because Irish job permit queue was 6 months long and growing.

This was a year ago. Right now it is hardly possible to leave Russia at all — leaving by ground is denied by Russian border forces (remnant of COVID restrictions, which has been repurposed to enact impromptu iron curtain). Leaving by air is impossible because most companies stopped flying, airspace is closed and foreign governments are mass-arresting leased aircrafts. As if that weren't enough, Russian government has enacted a total flight ban, effective starting today.

Even if you somehow leave a country and go to Turkey/Serbia/Georgia with piddly $10000, — then what? You'd have to quickly find a job, rent a place to live, and get a residence permit before you are booted out of country. All of that under extremely hostile conditions, such as not having a bank account and being unable to speak the local language.

[moonchrome]

This is true, nobody I know emigrated during COVID, was mostly 5-6 years ago in that late 20s period before you settle down.

With regards to Serbia at least, while I'm not from there it's a neighbouring country, Belgrade isn't that bad and working for westerners should be the same as working from Russia, minus a few hours of TZ depending on where you are from. English should be decent as well with the younger crowd, especially in IT, some older folk know Russian. And 10000$ would get you settled for months, people there don't make that in a year on average. Don't know much about the visa/bank account issues - maybe you could open a business and setup a bank account through that.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is also super cheap and a wild west regarding laws - people buy anything there - diplomas, citizenship. Also have working banking system. But standard of living is considerably worse.

[baq]

Corrupt west, of course. At least you can say what you think. Most of the time.

[freedomben]

Just not in "private" spaces, like 99% of the internet, if you're open minded to ideas like the Lab Leak Theory (TM) back when that was verboten.

[tw20212021]

Really? Just go to the east then

[cutemonster]

> they had decades to make this move

But friends, family and loved ones where they live

[mmarq]

It’s not that easy to move to the West when the only preoccupation of our governments has been reducing immigration.

[freedomben]

For what it's worth, if anything, I think you're a hero and I deeply appreciate your efforts. You're doing more than the vast majority of people (in any country) would do. It's just far more easy to change your principles than to live them and most people choose the path of least resistance.

[kikimora]

This is exactly what Russian government wants. It does not need this much Russians. It will be happy to have maybe 500 000 of them, just enough to pump oil and gas.

[nathanlied]

I've been finding it very easy to empathise with Russians in this. After what we've seen happening in so-called "enlightened" Western democracies, with all our press freedoms, and yet we still have homeopathy advocates, far-right (and left!) conspiracies, and all kinds of gnashing of teeth over "fake news".

How can I not look at Russian society, with a far more controlled environment, and think "how can Russians not know about it? How are they so easily deceived?", well, how are -we-, in the West, so easily deceived? It cuts both ways - but at least Russians have more of an excuse.

I am hoping you and your people find kindness wherever you decide to flee to. It is already difficult enough to uproot yourself (and your family), with an uncertain future, leaving friends and memories of better days behind. We need to advocate for Ukrainian refugees - those who are fleeing Putin's war of aggression - but we cannot forget that, while Ukrainians are the worse off in this conflict, many Russians will also be victims. Many Russians will not be able to return home. And many Russians may see friends and family prosecuted for opposing Putin's war.

[TravelPiglet]

I’ve yet to see any homeopathy advocates and conspiracy theorists attacking other countries. Stop pretending it’s the same thing.

[freedomben]

This black & white view of good and evil is starting to get really tiresome. Is it the effect of modern movies/tv shows that causes this belief? In movies there's usually a clear/perfect/innocent "good" guy and a bad guy, but real life is rarely so cut and dry.

It is perfectly possible for there to be two different parties, each of which (to different degrees of course) make bad decisions that hurt innocent people. Being honest about this and calling it out is not the same thing as equating what the "bad guy" and the "good guy" do.

[TravelPiglet]

Well most people here are binary. Killing people and believing in astrology or homeopathy or whatever are not comparable. It’s not about good or bad. It’s about basic human morals and rights.

[cutemonster]

I think he meant that in all countries, there are some people who believe in crazy things -- but that he didn't mean to make the comparison you reacted to

[TravelPiglet]

” I've been finding it very easy to empathise with Russians in this.”

[antattack]

Don't beat yourself over it. Now that you're out of the country, you can donate time and/or money to help fight for tolerance and against Putin regime.

[ativzzz]

For the vast majority of normal people, just leaving the country without plans of coming back is the best they can do.

[vixen99]

That would be a tough fight according to this poll reported on the 23rd February. Probably a disturbing result for those who think the Russians are not broadly in line with the government. However at that time only 13% thought it likely for the Kremlin to initiate military action towards Ukraine.

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-uk...