The FSB does not release millions of Russians abroad, writes The Daily Beast correspondent Anna Nemtsova. The employees of the special services are "not allowed to leave", and earlier this year it introduced more strict border control for those who want to leave the country, referring to the "changed geopolitical situation".
The fears began to grow among the Russian elite that a new "Iron Curtain", reminiscent of the restrictions on leaving during the Soviet era, begins to sink,.
Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer, considers the reason for that combination of insanely exaggerated security problems and concern about the ongoing massive "brain drain". The fact that the Kremlin can prohibit the departure of millions of military personnel, police officers and anyone who can have access to sensitive information "is a sign of increasing extreme paranoia," Gudkov said..
"I understand that a large number of countries want to hire Russian specialists today, but I am sure that no one needs a police sergeant or a worker like one of my relatives who works at an aircraft factory that produces small minor spare parts. He was recently banned from traveling abroad, "Gudkov told the publication.
"In April, the Federal Security Service presented to President Vladimir Putin for review new regulatory rules that described threats to Russia's national interests, its sovereignty, natural resources. Since the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine in 2014, authorities have banned more than 3 million government employees from traveling to the US and other NATO countries, "reads the article.
"Now it would be difficult to calculate the percentage of Russian civil servants who agreed to deprive themselves of the right to travel abroad either from patriotic feelings or in exchange for stable work and wages," Nemtsova wrote, citing the statement of the pro-Kremlin analyst Yuri Krupnov that most civil servants became out of the country "voluntarily", "to avoid provocation".
In May, more Russians than usual (up to 2.3 million people) found themselves in "rosters" because of their allegedly unpaid financial debts to the state, usually in the form of bank loans, the journalist said..
Last week, after a proposal made in the State Duma, to close visa centers, social networks exploded with indignation. "In the end, the State Duma refused the proposed bill, at least for the time being," Nemtsova wrote, noting that this would have affected the interests of the elite and caused even greater protest sentiments that had already grown over the past month.
"From all the TV screens we hear that Europe is rotting, that America is shit," one participant in the protests in Murmansk shouted into the microphone, "but our authorities send their children there, build palaces and spend vacations in the West!".
On the KGB officer Gudkov in 1987, his first trip to the US "on assignment" made a strong impression. "When I returned from America, I told a small circle of my colleagues from the KGB, prosecutors, high-ranking members of the CPSU that our country lags behind the US for at least 100 years.
All the examples given by me are relevant today, - says Gudkov. "But the current top Kremlin officials are very different from the Soviet leaders, including Putin and Foreign Minister [Sergey Lavrov], whose families are abroad: most of today's Russian elite hold here only a few things and passports. They are ready to leave. They are afraid that the West will not let them go - the "iron curtain" of the West will be the most effective tool against Putin's kleptocracy ".