The current relocation trend represents a modernized version of brain drain—not involving hundreds of academic researchers as in the 1970s and 1980s, but tens of thousands of highly qualified specialists in key areas of modern technology. The shortage on the homeland extends not only to programmers but also to engineers, information security experts, and representatives of many other specialties. Such personnel are now scarce in Russia even for the prioritized defense industry, and this is one of the material factors limiting its growth.
In addition to the outflow of highly qualified specialists, there is the classic brain drain among the most actively publishing Russian scientists. According to A. Lovakov, who has analyzed Scopus, the largest database of scientific publications, showing the researchers’place of work, in 2022, 1,465 publishing researchers left Russia (replaced by 672 specialists from abroad, primarily from the “Global South” ). In 2023, already 1,938 scientists departed, while 618 arrived. The highest emigration figures were recorded in fields such as physics (–4.42%), computer science (–3.45%), economics and finance (–2.89%), and math (–2.38%). All these individuals are highly acclaimed researchers who have easily secured new positions in leading global research centers. The reasons for their departure are transparent: with the onset of fullscale invasion of Ukraine, any contact with the Western scientific community sharply complicated, and the risks of being accused of espionage and undesirable contacts increased.
Relocation is putting an additional strain on an already catastrophic populational dynamic in Russia. In recent years, before they stopped sharing populational statistics, Russia posted about 100,000 births and approximately 150,000 deaths per month. Solely due to natural population movement (excluding migrations), the population has declined by 0.5–0.6 million people annually. With the outbreak of the war, due to the combat casualties, mortality increased by several tens of thousands of people per year, roughly by 5%. When considering the mortality rate among men of conscription age (and simultaneously the most reproductive age), it is significantly higher. Against this background, the emigration of another one million potential fathers and mothers dashes any hopes of halting the growing depopulation. The state program launched in 2006 to repatriate compatriots has, over 19 years, brought back about 1.2 million people to Russia — and a comparable number fled abroad in just one or two years due to the war and mobilization. In 2024, the influx under the repatriation program fell to a multi-year low: only 31,700 people.
In 2000 (the year Vladimir Putin was first elected president), the population of Russia, according to Rosstat, was 146.6 million. In January 2025, as reported by the same Rosstat, the population was 146.0 million. If we consider that during this period, an additional 2.5 million people quietly integrated into the statistical population from Crimea and Sevastopol, plus 2–3 million who relocated from eastern Ukrainian regions, and including migration-driven additions of new citizens from Central Asia and the previously mentioned repatriates, then it is no longer about stagnation but a disguised failure amounting to 5–7 million people. On August 8, 2025, Deputy Minister of Labor Dmitry Platygin, forecasted a reduction in the number of Russia’s population of prime working age (30–39 years) by 6 million people by 2030. In such a situation, Russia simply cannot afford the flight of hundreds of thousands of citizens of reproductive age, yet it itself pushes them to leave through its counterproductive policies.
Notably, the tightening of visa regimes in host countries and the establishment of additional administrative barriers for relocation—in a technical sense—reduces populational losses for Russia resulting from aggressive foreign policy, preserving for the country both taxpayers and potential conscripts. Europe’s priorities, it can be reckoned, should lie with either of the following two: having more conscription-age immigrants on its territory or more soldiers in Putin’s war trenches.