Kremlin Trapping Expats

In typical Soviet fashion, Russian authorities have cranked up the pressure on Russian citizens who have left the country, threatening to strip them of their assets and citizenship. 

Ella Pamfilova, Russia's chief of the Central Election Committee, and thus charged with protecting Russians voting rights, called those who left the country “traitors” and implied they should have no right to vote. “I think if you left the country, if you betrayed it, then get lost,” she told Komsomolskaya Pravda radio. She encouraged Duma lawmakers to decide in their next session who is worthy and unworthy of voting in Russian elections.

Earlier this summer, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that de facto robs many Russians of citizenship rights. Under the new rules, Russians who have been sentenced in a Russian court or who were ordered to pay a fine, but who are living abroad and therefore “avoiding” punishment, will now be unable to get basic services at Russian consulates. This would include registering a new passport, marriage or property. These expats' Russian assets can also be arrested and their accounts in Russia can be frozen. This includes Russians who are issued administrative cautions for “violating Russia’s interests,” which could be anyone speaking or writing critically about Russia's War on Ukraine or about the Russian military.

The new measures are likely to make life considerably more difficult for many Russians. This is in contrast to the situation 100 years ago. While Russians who fled after the Bolshevik Revolution cut all ties and said goodbye to all assets, most expats today are still deeply embedded in Russia’s banking system. Many still own flats, support family members in Russia, receive pension payments for long years of Russian employment, have children enrolled in online education in Russia, or even continue to run businesses from abroad. The prospects of losing these connections are likely to make people more careful about expressing their opinion about the war or about participating in any political or oppositional activity, which is undoubtedly the desired effect of Putin's law. To make matters worse, Russian courts can hold hearings without notifying the accused about their alleged infraction, which means that, for many people, the above restrictions can come as a complete surprise. 

The advice to Russians who think they may be targeted is to sever all financial ties with the country, including by selling any property before September 1, 2026, when the measure on asset arrest goes into effect.

But there's the rub... Because while Russian expats are getting squeezed by their birth country, they are not always welcomed overseas.

• The EU has tightened rules against Russian citizens, last year ending multi-entry visas.
• The US has made it harder for individuals to get entry visas if you are resident outside your country of citizenship.
• The US has also paused issuance of immigrant visas for Russians.
• Without a legal residence in Europe, Russians cannot open a bank account, and their chance of getting refugee status is statistically quite low – estimated at just 18.1% (according to 2025 figures cited by The Insider). What is more, according to new rules, Russian expats will now undergo expedited procedures that make it more difficult to prove that they face danger or persecution back home.

In other words, anti-war Russians are caught between a Russian rock and a European hard place.

Russian film producer Alexander Rodnyansky compared the situation with the unenviable position of anti-Hitler Germans in the 1930s. The so-called Ausburgerungsliste was a register of Germans living abroad whose citizenship was cancelled. The register eventually grew to tens of thousands of names and included critical journalists, left-leaning politicians, outspoken artists, as well as German Jews. These de-naturalised Germans included figures like Albert Einstein, and the writers Thomas Mann and Bertold Brecht.

Rodnyansky, who was declared a “foreign agent” in 2022 and sentenced to an eight-year prison term in absentia for criticizing Russia's War on Ukraine, is a prime contender for the new Russian register. 

“For many this was a terrible blow, which they could not survive,” Rodnyansky wrote of the Germans targeted by the Nazi denaturalisation law. “Democratic states were in no hurry to give them passports, they underwent naturalisation waiting for their turn for many years.”

“These are extraordinary historical parallels. Or maybe not so extraordinary,” he wrote on his Instagram account.