ReportLawyers, doctors, business creators… on February 24, the lives of these Russians changed. Hostile to the “special military operation” of their president in Ukraine, worried about the coming economic collapse, terrified to see the “iron curtain” closing, they packed their bags and left their country.
Yulia T. belongs to a generation of Russians who thought they were done with the convulsions of history. A generation that came of age in the fierce 1990s, sensible enough to stay away from politics. In her entire life, the 44-year-old lawyer has only participated in one protest movement, in 2011-2012, against fraud in the legislative and presidential elections. Joyful era during which hundreds of thousands of people believed in a possible change and communed in the squares of the big cities.
Alas, the change did not come. Only the most motivated continued the fight, often in the wake of Alexeï Navalny, the rising star of this movement of 2011-2012. When the opponent was poisoned in August 2020, then imprisoned six months later in Moscow, Yulia and her husband, Vladislav, 47, stayed at home, disgusted, of course, but not enough to face the police machine. and judicial. “I am not a barricade girl”sums up the young woman with neatly cut short hair with a smile.
Behind them, a “comfortable life”
In fact, the couple chose another path, which Yulia calls “a comfortable life” : nice apartment in a residential suburb, German car, trips abroad, bottles of wine tasted with friends… and the culmination of a life, this legal consulting firm that Yulia and Vladislav set up together. Everything did not suit them, including in their field of activity – “Even in tax or business law, there is no rule of law, only servile judges”slice Yulia –, but for the rest, the choice was rational: “If you didn’t say anything publicly, objectively life was very bearable, pleasant, even. »
She is no longer. One February 24 at dawn, when their president announced the launch of a “special military operation” against the Ukrainian neighbor, this world collapsed. It was first the guts that spoke: “I immediately felt, physically, the horror and the absurd… It became impossible for me to breathe in this country. »
As the days went by and the tears shed over the Ukrainian cities, other questions were added to the shock, just as distressing: what if Vladislav, trained in a military institute, was mobilized by the army? What if patiently constructed comfort collapsed? What if we were no longer safe? “Even if the war ended tomorrowthinks Yulia, this country is lost for years, maybe decades. The economic collapse, we already feel it, and it can only intensify. Also repression a simple sign “for peace” leads to prison. »
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