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Visitors on the Peace Bridge in Tbilisi.

Visitors on the Peace Bridge in Tbilisi.

Photographer: Tako Robakidze/Bloomberg
Politics

Russia’s Brain Drain Is Officially Underway

More than 20,000 tech workers have joined the exodus to Georgia, but the new arrivals are also raising rents and arousing suspicion.

Dmitry Klimenko is putting the final touches to a new nightclub in Tbilisi’s central Vake Park, aimed at drawing some of the tens of thousands of disoriented fellow Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians who fled to Georgia in recent months.

A veteran of seven nightclubs he opened in his home town of Novosibirsk over the years, Klimenko left Russia on March 7, as President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine darkened the political climate at home.