Offering ‘brain drain’ visas could help to break Vladimir Putin’s economy, according to a new report. By “incentivising elite defection” to the West, Russia could be undermined, it argues.
Once these “liberal” Russians arrive in the UK, setting up a “pro-Western Russian exile community,” their former president would miss their expertise—while they boost university recruitment and resolve Britain’s skills shortages.
Report author Dr Stephen Hall declares
For too long, Britain and the West have indulged in the fiction that Putin can be reasoned with. Strategic patience must now give way to strategic resolve.
Hall’s resolute policy would also be risky. To date, Putin ally Belarus has routinely used migrants in hybrid warfare designed to destabilise Poland, setting a disturbing precedent.
British citizens were broadly supportive of Ukraine- and Hong Kong-focused refugee programmes—less so for Gazans—but share a broader concern with reducing net migration. It is unclear how accepting ‘liberal’ Russians would fit in with such a policy.
Likewise, any political litmus test for ‘liberalism’ would be fraught with difficulty. What about conservative Russians? Would an applicant need to declare that ‘transwomen are women’? Or stress “the importance of unity between the world’s great democracies, represented by institutions such as NATO, the European Union and the OECD, amongst many others”—as do report publishers the Henry Jackson Society—in order to be granted a Putin-wrecking visa?
