Hundreds of thousands of Russians opposed to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and alienated by pro-war sentiment are establishing a new life abroad

In the days after Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in late February, Vladimir Shurupov, a cardiologist from the Siberian city of Tomsk, felt he could not breathe properly. “I was having panic attacks, I could not eat or sleep. I just knew I had to remove myself from this place, from this atmosphere,” he said.

Shurupov, 40, had been a quiet critic of Putin’s government for years, but he had never attended a protest of any kind, fearful of unwanted attention or arrest. When the war began, disgust with the regime combined with a fear he would be sent to the front. “If there was mobilisation, I would have been called up as a military doctor, and this is not a war I would be willing to fight in,” he said.