, Columnist
Russia Is Not Dying From a Brain Drain
Vladimir Putin's policies haven't led to a mass exodus.
This article is for subscribers only.
I left Russia soon after the Crimea annexation in 2014, hoping to avoid supporting President Vladimir Putin's aggression with my taxes. Since then, I have read dozens of stories about my country's brain drain, many of them citing my description of this new wave of departures as the "emigration of the disappointed." Most of these analyses have been wrong. Russia does have a problem with its human capital, but it's not primarily a question of a brain drain, and the wrong statistics are being used to describe it.