In 2011, Russia‘s President Vladimir Putin faced heavy backlash for what many believe was a rigged election. The Russian leader lost much of the loyalty and admiration he had won for rebuilding the country’s economy. Protests ensued and the government cracked down with harsh regulations.
Since then, emigration from Russia has been continuously on the rise. According to Rosstat, the state statistics agency, about 350,000 people left Russia in 2015, the most in decades.
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In a country of 144 million people, this rate of emigration seems small. Russia is no stranger to people crossing its borders, though, and is actually home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the world.
But, according to experts, what is disconcerting now is how many of those leaving are the country’s most educated and successful. While the most recent wave of emigration may have started for political reasons, by 2015, objectives had shifted to economic ones like job opportunities and higher education degrees.
“At the risk of sounding a bit too poetic here, I’d say I imagine this ’emigration of the brightest’ as Russia’s slow bleeding,” says Olga Khvostunova, a political analyst and editor-in-chief at the Institute of Modern Russia, a public policy think-tank in the U.S. “The country is not dying because of it, but it does get weaker and weaker.”
Lauren Goodrich, a senior Eurasia analyst at research firm Stratfor, says recent emigration trends could challenge Russia’s ability to stay competitive on a global scale in important sectors like healthcare and telecommunications.
“Russia already has a problem funding research and development of these sectors. If the people who work in them are also leaving, progress will stagnate across the board,” she says.
The majority of Russian emigrants stay within former Soviet Union countries such as Kazakhstan and Ukraine, known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. But, according to Rosstat, the share of emigrants moving outside of the commonwealth to places like the U.S. and Europe has been increasing, further challenging the nation’s global competitiveness.
Here are the countries with the largest Russian emigrant populations, as of mid-2015, according to the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
| Country | Number of Russian migrants | Best Countries rank |
| Ukraine | 1.9 million | 59 |
| Kazakhstan | 1.2 million | 55 |
| Germany | 606,000 | 1 |
| Uzbekistan | 474,000 | N/A |
| Belarus | 377,000 | N/A |
| U.S. | 206,000 | 4 |
| Tajikistan | 135,000 | N/A |
| Estonia | 90,000 | N/A |
| Latvia | 88,000 | N/A |
| Kyrgyzstan | 68,000 | N/A |
| Israel | 66,000 | 25 |
| Italy | 63,000 | 13 |
| Georgia | 53,000 | N/A |
| Spain | 48,000 | 16 |
| Canada | 45,000 | 2 |
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Countries with the Most Russian Emigrants originally appeared on usnews.com
