• Men can be mobilized. Mobilization thing is still going.
• USD and EUR were prohibited or limited at banks atm and VISA/Mastercard stopped working + sanctions (mostly minor)
• Ruble became weak. There is less and less reason to work with it, because it drops all the time and salaries usually don't get re-indexed.
• Many random censorship blockages of Internet resources (and other media for example books). For example GNU Mailing lists were banned. Also Guix servers were banning ru IPs, so you can't use substitutes there, which is critical for such system as GNU Guix.
  • Censorship is strong enough to get you into jail just for posting online that war is a war. (Instruction on how to not get arrested for posting).
  • Censorship is strong enough to get you into jail just for LIKES and REPOSTS of some materials. For example there is ongoing thing of FOREIGN AGENTS, if you repost them without marking YOU will be fined.
  • Censorship is strong enough to get you into jail for hosting TOR exit node. In general in Russia you have a feeling that everything is prohibited if otherwise is not stated, not the other way around. The state has a centralized control over society.
• Political propaganda became too wild to handle. Schools started to have propaganda too (Уроки о важном).
• I was arrested once at the protest (and after that police might be interested in you)

Those reasons you might find a bit silly, but I believe if you are involved into IT it would be a shame to be not connected to the rest of community especially if you are into free software. Internal market might be ok, but I think it would suck like it sucked in USSR.

Majority of my Russian friends stayed in Russia. Immigration is costly, standard of living will be lower and there is no guarantee that immigration is even the answer. I find myself that I might return any-day if something critical happens to my friends, family or something else. At the same time would be nice to distance from Russia even further.

Tbilisi is a capital of Georgia. It is very nice city and I like being here. At the time of arriving it had lots of support of Ukrainian people and lots of hate to Russia expressed in wall graffities and demonstrating Ukrainian flags. It was a bit of a shock for me, because in Moscow if you do something like this you just get arrested, you literally can't even write something on a wall without being punished hard. Tbilisi also has lots of EU flags, because the state and people want (or wanted) to be in EU hard enough.

The currency is Georgian Lari (GEL). And when I've arrived it was something like 20 rubles per lari, now it is 35 rubles per lari. Ruble has dropped for at least 33% if you ask me and lari became much stronger currency compared to it. It was easy to buy crypto here, it became a bit harder after the regulations, but it is still possible. Yet I don't use this, just noting that you can see some Bitcoin shops in the city, which was a surprise for me because there is literally none in Moscow.

No VISA required

Russians can stay here for 1 year without a visa as a tourist and than do the visa run and stay another year. Ukrainians can stay for 2 years straight.

0-1% business tax

probably the lowest in the world

Rent is cheaper

I think the minimal is $300-350 per month here. It was even cheaper before big migration wave.

Products

Products are generally cheaper than in EU (I hope)

Community

Many Russian-speaking people are here. It means that Georgia is a good place for meetups, conferences and other activities. For example there is a hackerspace F0rthsp4ce. @akater organized Emacs meetup and @tropin did guix meetup.

Russia

Georgia is close to Russia, so friends, family and other can come here more easily compared to other countries.

Climate

Georgia has a warm climate. There is almost no snow at winter and generally very warm.

Nature

Georgia has a lot of mountains and caves and it is great for hiking.

Georgian are friendly

hospitality is their feature

Free (Libre) Internet

Mostly not blocked at all.

No bureaucracy

It was extremely easy to open a business and bank card. In general country feels much less trouble than others, I'm sure that EU has much harder procedures for everything.

Minimum regulation

Georgia feels like it has low government regulations in general, but it might be only a feeling. Russia and Moscow felt much more over-regulated, you can be arrested if you cross the road in non appropriate place for example.

Russia

Russia is too close and has influence in Georgian politics. Also it might be dangerous for activists.

Citizenship

It is mostly impossible to get a citizenship. You need to stay here for 10 years with a permit for a living and government often declines providing those.

Less jobs

If you work outside of IT it is much harder to get a job compared to Moscow.

Less salary

If you handle to get a job it will be less profitable. My brother works here and get 50% less. I might guess that IT jobs has the same downside here, but not sure.

High import fees

You need to pay 20% fee if you order stuff from Internet markets above $100.

Hard language

Georgian language is very hard to learn compared to others. It is old and niche language.

Visa problem

Many embassies requires a permit for a living in a country before your visa request, so I can't for example do a visa in Georgia. I need to go either to Russia or seek other countries to get a permit. The only exception is Spain Embassy in Armenia which works as a proxy for Embassy in Russia, so you can get a visa without a permit.

Internet is expensive and slow

In Moscow I've paid $3 per month to get 40MBit. Here 45MBit costs $12.5. It is actually not so critical as packet losses and overall quality.

Electricity shutdowns

Compared to Moscow it happens a bit too often and it depends on your neighborhood.

Of course Georgia is not the only option for migration. It was for a moment because of mass emigration and prices, but in general there is a choice. EU and other countries closed its borders for Russians or made it harder to get a VISA.

If something happens to Georgia, most likely I would move to one of these countries:

Serbia

Montenegro

Spain

Portugal

Argentina

Urugway

Most options has a common problem - T A X E S. They are extremely high. In Russia the tax for individual business is 6-12%. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing in general, but it is a bad thing for the guy, who wants to start living in a country without having billions beforehand. 15-22% is kinda nice, but still quite high compared to Georgian 0-1%.

Overall I'm glad that I've left Russia. Even if I would return it is nice to have an experience living abroad. I never been abroad before and generally I'm more "sitting at one place all my life" type of person. I've found new connections here and not feeling alone, maybe I even became more social here. I hope other Russian fellows who decided to not participate in government actions are doing well.

Peace.