Russian tech executive Ilya Krasilshchik hurriedly packed up three suitcases and boarded a flight to Dubai this week with no plan and no idea what would come next. All he wanted was to leave a country “flying into an abyss”, he said.
Krasilshchik is one of tens of thousands of Russians who have fled the country in recent days, seeking to escape the spiralling effects of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, from western sanctions imposed in response to the war to the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent.