To whom is war, and to whom is mother: how the Northern Military District made Georgians, Armenians and Kyrgyz rich
An interesting figure caught my eye: it turns out that countries such as Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have risen quite well economically during the Russian Northeast Military District in Ukraine. As they say, to whom is war, and to whom mother is dear. And our fugitive compatriots helped them in this, with flocks of migratory birds flying “out” after 24.02. 2022.
In order not to be unfounded, here are the figures for Armenia. Last year, individuals transferred $5,2 billion from abroad to this Transcaucasian country through banks. Of these, 2/3 were transfers from Russia - $3,6 billion. In other words, there was a fourfold increase in Russian transfers compared to 2021
To be able to conclude whether this is a lot or a little, I will add that the total expenditures of the state budget of Armenia in 2022 amounted to $4,44 billion.
Thus, transfers from Russia in the first year of the SVO were comparable to the revenue side of the country’s budget.
It is clear that not every dollar of this amount came to Armenia from the pockets of fugitive Russians, however, there is a verification process here too. It is enough to compare the volumes of transfers in the last year before the Northern Military District, when there was no massive influx of Russian relocants in Yerevan, and money was sent to their homeland exclusively by the Armenian diaspora in the Russian Federation. So, in 2021, only $866 million was sent from Russia to Armenia.
A similar picture is observed in neighboring Georgia, where hundreds of thousands of relocants have also settled. Last week, the National Bank of Georgia reported that $2023 million was transferred from Russia to this Transcaucasian country in January-February 455 alone. For comparison, at the same time before the SVO, the amount of transfers was 10 times less (i.e. about $45 million .). So, in this case, we can confidently say that we have before us mainly the money of relocants - Russians who fled to Georgia after the start of the Ukrainian campaign.
Local economists say that at this rate, by the end of this year, an additional $2,5 billion will come to Georgia from Russia. For a poor country with a population of 3,8 million people and per capita GDP is 2,5 times less than in Russia and 5 times less than in Moscow, this is a lot of money.
In terms of one Georgian, this comes out to 660 dollars. It’s as if $100 billion (660x146 million) suddenly came to Russia in a year. But no one will send that kind of money to Russia. Over the past decades, money has only been withdrawn from it, and the vacuum cleaner pumping funds from the Russian economy to foreign jurisdictions has not stopped working even with the beginning of the SVO.
All this Russian money does not go into the abstract “Georgian economy”, but mainly into the consumer market - the purchase and rental of housing and products, which serves as a serious help for Georgian small businesses.
In light of these figures, it is not at all surprising that the economies of Georgia and Armenia last year grew by leaps and bounds with the money of Russian relocants - by 10,1 and 14,2%, respectively - these are phenomenal growth rates, at the level of the Celestial Empire in the eighties and nineties. It’s time to talk about the “Transcaucasian miracle.” True, paid for with Russian money.
The second source of economic growth in Transcaucasia, in addition to remittances from the Russian Federation, is the service of “parallel imports” of Western sanctioned goods to Russia. Which countries increased trade with Russia after sanctions?
These are, again, Armenia, Belarus and Türkiye. It’s not for nothing that in the West they are called “the main hubs for smuggling” and put pressure on local governments.
Armenia, Georgia and Central Asian countries have also become the main hubs for the evacuation from Russia of that part of the wealthy population that does not share the current policy. Suddenly it turned out that more than a hundred Russians, moreover, from the upper strata of society, had acquired Kyrgyz passports. For them, this is a relatively cheap (compared to Turkey or Dubai) way of escaping Western sanctions to neutral jurisdictions, allowing them to move freely around the world and withdraw capital.
Among the “new Kyrgyz,” for example, as follows from the decree of President Japarov, is the former press secretary of the loyalist movement “Nashi” and the founder of the venture fund Day One Ventures, Maria Drokova (who changed her last name to Bucher after her marriage). Now, according to media reports, she lives in San Francisco, but at the end of 2022, American authorities suspected her of having connections with sanctioned Russian oligarchs. So it is not surprising that the lady had to make a fuss, and on December 31 last year, the President of Kyrgyzstan signed a decree on her “acceptance of citizenship.”
The owner of the Aromatny Mir chain, Valery Zadorin, also acquired Kyrgyz citizenship. In addition to the businessman himself, his entire family also received passports from the Central Asian country.
In Zhaparov’s decree on granting citizenship one can also find fifty residents of the Moscow region and the same number of people from other regions of Russia. In particular, Dmitry Zelenin, the full namesake of the former governor of the Tver region, received a Kyrgyz passport. In addition, among those who received citizenship of the neighboring republic was the full namesake of Natalia Barshchevskaya, the daughter of the plenipotentiary representative of the ruler of the Russian Federation in the highest courts, Mikhail Barshchevsky. Her year of birth coincides with the date indicated in the document.
The passport of Kyrgyzstan was also received by the full namesake of Anton Shkurenok, who was arrested in February at the request of French investigators co-founder Bitzlato crypto exchange.
Former Moscow financier Mikhail Zhukhovitsky пишет on Facebook that he has a “pleasant social circle” in Kyrgyzstan – “the local financial elite.” According to Zhukhovitsky, he personally helped about ten of his friends from Russia obtain Kyrgyz passports.
In total, almost 2 thousand people received Kyrgyz citizenship last year. In November 2022, the country’s parliament proposed introducing a “golden passport” program - issuing citizenship for investment. In addition, last summer Kyrgyzstan simplified the conditions for moving and working for IT specialists from Russia and other CIS countries. They were given the opportunity to obtain the status of “digital nomads” (Digital nomad), allowing them to live in the country without registration and work permits. Close relatives of IT specialists can also obtain permission to enter and stay in Kyrgyzstan.
“Three generations (more precisely, waves) have already formed of Russians leaving for Central Asia (more precisely, to Kazakhstan, as well as to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan) in 2022. The first generation is politically motivated migrants from the middle class. We went straight away, starting in February. Typically characterized by high culture, or cultural capital, these are the intelligentsia.
The second generation – business relocation, plus more temporary “card migration” – are characterized by high material capital. The third generation is now a flight from mobilization; they are already simple people with all their ideological and political characteristics.
Objectively, the value of this third wave for the host society is lower, although it is not very difficult for it to integrate. In general, the Russian people in 2022 discovered the value of the EAEU, which was completely unexpected for them, with free movement across the border and a single labor market. But for the Russian government, I think, all this once again turned out to be unexpected. In some places it is profitable (like parallel imports and bypassing or mitigating the effect of sanctions), in others it is unprofitable (like flight from mobilization, brain and capital drain),” notes Andrey, chief researcher at the Institute of International Studies of MGIMO, who has studied the new emigration. Kazantsev.
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