Twenty-seven-year-old financial analyst Alexi and his girlfriend were among the protestors who flocked to Moscow’s Pushkin Square Feb. 24 to decry Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, only to face heavy-handed police. They felt they had to leave their country and did so two days later, joining tens of thousands of compatriots fleeing abroad. 

“That we were in such small numbers at the anti-war protest and the harsh response of the police … made me think that we cannot change anything. We realized it was not going to be good for us and made a decision right there to leave Russia,” Alexi told Al-Monitor in Istanbul. 

Alexi and his Ukrainian-born girlfriend are among thousands of Russians who have poured into Istanbul since the invasion of Ukraine, taking advantage of Turkish Airlines’ ongoing flights between the two countries and the visa-free entry that Turkey offers to Russian nationals. As many as 200,000 Russians fearing the political and economic fallout of the war are estimated to have fled abroad. They are mostly anti-war activists and political opponents of President Vladimir Putin fearful of Moscow’s clampdown on the opposition, young men wary of being drafted into the army to fight in Ukraine, or middle-class professionals pessimistic about their economic prospects at home after the barrage of Western sanctions and Russia’s own introduction of capital controls.

On the evening of March 15, hundreds of those Russians flocked to a performance venue in Kadikoy, on Istanbul’s Asian side, chanting anti-war slogans. What drew them there was a benefit concert by popular Russian rapper Oxxxymiron, who has canceled all his performances in Russia and announced a series of concerts abroad titled “Russians Against War,” with all proceeds going to Ukrainian refugees. The sold-out event in Istanbul was the first in the series.