Russians began to increasingly look for ways to leave the country

Interest in relocation renewed at the end of last year

At the end of 2025 - beginning of 2026, for the first time after partial mobilization, a growing interest in the topic of emigration from the country is again noticeable among Russian citizens, as evidenced by Google Trends query statistics, Vorstka noted.

If you look at the data on the number of queries on Google about “how to leave Russia” and simply “leave Russia” from the beginning of 2023, then the peak for them will be in January 2023 - this is the residual effect of the surge associated with the announcement of partial mobilization in September 2022.

After this, the number of requests gradually fell and reached its lowest value in February 2025: if in January 2023 interest in the topic “leave Russia” was estimated at 100 points, then by February 2025 it dropped to 31.

Then the number of requests about leaving Russia began to grow again and by the end of 2025 - beginning of 2026 formed a noticeable upward trend. Thus, in January 2026, interest in the query “leave Russia” already increased to 75 points, and the average calculation for March, which has not yet ended, shows 88 points.

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Yandex has not yet seen a strong increase in interest in the topic of emigration

At the same time, such a noticeable increase in the topic of emigration has not yet been observed in Yandex. According to Yandex Wordstat data, Russians made the smallest number of requests to “leave Russia” in Yandex in September 2025—almost 44 thousand.

Over the next four months, the number of requests regularly increased and by January reached 59.9 thousand. However, this is significantly less than January 2023, when almost 234 thousand searches for “leave Russia” were recorded.

We would like to remind you that Vorstka previously reported that in 2024, the number of residence permits received by Russians in the EU fell by a third over the year and reached the pre-war level. We also wrote that they want to introduce criminal penalties for failure to notify the Russian consulate of a new citizenship or residence permit.

Photo: Sheremetyev Departure Hall. Tian Bing/China News Service/VCG via Reuters Connect