In February of last year, the Russian government launched the invasion of Ukraine through a message from Putin declaring that he “decided to conduct a special military operation” because NATO was allegedly threatening the nation’s borders through Ukrainian territory, among other motives. This moment set off a massive wave of emigration in the country for different reasons, but most of them related to the effects the conflict could have on citizens’ lives. On March 16th of that year, the President issued a warning calling emigrants “Russian traitors”, claiming the West wanted to use them as the “fifth column”.
According to the war report card of Harvard Kennedy School, at least 800,000 Russians have fled the country, although unofficial sources estimate the number to be over four times higher.
Argentina, specifically, became home to many young Russian couples. Most of them settled in Buenos Aires while expecting children because of how flexible the country’s immigration laws are, including the Law of Citizenship that allows any individual born in Argentinian territory to have their nationality; no matter where their parents come from. Other Russian citizens also moved to the city to simply start a new life, far away from conflict, build their own businesses -many of them being restaurants or beauty salons- and send their kids to local schools.
In February of this year, I was able to meet one of those Russian couples, they had only moved to Argentina two months prior and were also expecting a baby. Interviewing the husband, who I will call Dmitri for the sake of this article, detailed to me what their life was like before moving abroad. He described it as a “normal lifestyle, not too different to the one people have in other countries”, explaining both, he and his wife, rented an apartment in Moscow and worked in education.
He stated they were "actually considering moving out ever since the July 2020 referendum was passed”, which included over two hundred amendments. Some of them had to do with a reset of presidential terms, allowing Putin to run twice more, some others were related to provisionally banning the relinquishing of any Russian territory. The referendum led to many protests in Moscow, and all of that together, including what Dmitri described as the “push of political matters into the educational system”, made the couple worry things could get out of control. They also did not feel comfortable with the way it was affecting their jobs.
When asked about how they feel living in Argentina and whether they would like to move back to Russia or not, he expressed that Buenos Aires is a beautiful place and they are planning on settling there for at least five more years. He specified they truly want to become more like locals in hopes of comfortably feeling part of society. Dmitri also says they would like to go back to Russia at some point, but the current situation does not make it possible, and everything seems too uncertain.
Afterward, he proceeded to tell me about his family and how he actually has both, Russian and Ukrainian family members. The relatives in Moscow are incapable of leaving the country despite wanting to, whether it is because of their jobs or other documentation issues, such as not being able to get passports as a result of the terms the bureaucratic system imposes. The Ukrainian ones were actually living there just a few months ago, some in the city of Kramatorsk -which has been completely destroyed-, but they had to urgently escape to neighboring countries. Dmitri emphasized how nobody in his family agreed with the invasion and therefore are all against the war, no matter their nationality; leading anyone to believe this must be the case for many Russians.
“Some of my relatives in Ukraine are still missing, we don’t know anything about them” he stated, “and everything just seems to be getting even worse, we are deeply worried”.