Many of the Russians who relocated to Israel to escape Vladimir Putin’s draft or to protest the illegal invasion of Ukraine are now lining up to join Tel Aviv’s fight against Hamas.
An analysis and policy network run by exiled academics called Re: Russia found that between 817,000 and 922,000 Russians left their homeland since February 2022.
While Kazakhstan, Serbia and Armenia are the nations that received the largest influx of Russian émigrés over the past 20 months, some 75,000 people headed to Israel, where Jewish Russians could apply for citizenship.
Viktor Vakhshtayn, a Russian sociologist who emigrated to Israel shortly before the war, said to have noted prior to the attacks on the weekend by Hamas a chasm between Russians who wanted to make Israel their new home and those waiting out the end of the conflict in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s reign.
But the difference between these two groups, he claimed, was forgotten after Hamas militants launched a multipronged attack on Israel on Saturday.
He told the FT: “There are certainly different groups [of Russian émigrés] in Israel, but they have come together in this amazing wave of solidarity. I see so many of them standing in lines to give blood.”
Many of those who refused to join the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine, he continued, are now asking Tel Aviv to enlist them to help Israel’s fight against terrorism, in a huge slap in the face for Putin.
Mr Vakhshtayn continued: “People who would have never been part of the war machine in Russia are stubbornly trying to get called up to fight.
“Everyone tells them to take it easy, learn Hebrew and how to hold a rifle, and then go. But Putin couldn’t mobilise 300,000 people without handing out draft notices.”
The Russian propaganda machine has already been put in motion to mock the émigrés who left their homeland and found themselves in a warzone.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, warned on Tuesday that Russians fleeing Israel after they “wished for victory for the bloody Nazi regime in Kyiv” would not be welcomed back into society but, rather, would be “guaranteed” access to the Magadan prison camps.
The precise scale of Russian emigration prompted by the war in Ukraine can’t be gauged, as the Kremlin doesn’t share data on the matter.
However, it is known that the exodus of emigrants began with the invasion, with up to 300,000 leaving Russia in the first few months of the Ukrainian war.
A second wave came in September last year, when Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” to make up for the grievous losses experienced by Russia on the battlefield.
Over the past months, Putin has implemented measures to bolster his army, including raising the conscription age from 27 to 30.
