‘I was running out of money’: After quitting wartime Russia, some return

Tens of thousands of Russians fled after President Vladimir Putin launched a war on neighbouring Ukraine [File: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters]

Arseny, a young IT worker from Moscow, left Russia in September 2022 on the day President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation of young men to serve on the front lines of Ukraine.

“On the day of the mobilisation, my mother called at about 12 o’clock,” he remembered.