DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – On a man-made island at the edge of the Persian Gulf, Dima Tutkov feels safe.
None of the anti-Russian sentiments he hears in Europe. He didn’t notice potholes or homelessness, unlike what he saw in Los Angeles. And even if his ad agency makes big profits in Russia, he doesn’t have to worry about being called up to fight in Ukraine.
“Dubai is much freer – in every way,” he said, wearing an intricately torn T-shirt at a cafe he recently opened in the city, where his children now attend. at a British school. “We are independent of Russia,” he said. “This is very important.”
A year after the historic strike of economic sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine, the rich in Russia are still rich. And in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ largest city, they found their wartime harbor.
Between the riverside walkways, palatial shopping malls and suburban dead-ends of the city, Russian is becoming the lingua franca. Oligarchs mingle in exclusive resorts. Restaurants from Moscow and St. Petersburg race to open there. Entrepreneurs like Mr. Tutkov are running their Russian businesses from Dubai and opening new ones.
The new Russian community in Dubai includes many billionaires who have been hit with sanctions and middle-class tech workers who have fled President Vladimir V. Putin’s draft. But to some extent, they share the same reasons for coming to Emirates: It maintains direct flights to Russia, offers a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine, and they say shows no hostility. to the Russians that they perceive in Europe.
“Why do business somewhere they are not friendly with you?” Tamara Bigaeva, who recently opened a two-story outpost of a cosmetic clinic in Russia, which has welcomed longtime clients, said. “In Europe, they clearly don’t want to see us.”
Indeed, a major attraction of Dubai is that it is apolitical, according to interviews with Russians who have settled there. Unlike in Western Europe, no Ukrainian flags were displayed in public and there were no solidarity protests. The war itself felt far-fetched. Either way, anyone in Dubai harboring anti-Russian sentiments will most likely keep them to themselves; demonstrations in the absolute monarchy of the Emirates are actually illegal and freedom of assembly is severely restricted.
The presence of wealthy Russians in Dubai at a time when they are largely cut off from the West shows how Mr Putin can maintain the social contract that is key to his domestic support. him: In exchange for loyalty, powerful people can accumulate enormous wealth.
In fact, one political scientist, Ekaterina Schulmann, said Putin has signaled to businessmen that he is willing to remove more obstacles to getting rich. For example, a recent law allows legislators not to disclose their income and assets.
“Yes, we have cut you off from the First World, but things are not going to get any worse for you,” Schulmann said, describing how she views Putin’s revised contract with the elites. save. “First of all, there are many other countries that are friendly to us. Second, you will have more opportunities to become even richer and we will not prosecute you for corruption anymore.”
Publicly, Mr. Putin has called on Russia’s jet-equipped elite to refocus their lives and investments inside Russia. But the wealthy who moved to Dubai had a different opinion.
“For all of us, this is a safe island for a certain period of time,” says Anatoly Kamenskikh, a Russian real estate agent, boasting that his team has sold valuable property. for $300 million in Dubai last year — mostly to Russians. citizen. “Everybody is trying to deposit their fortune somewhere.”
Mr. Kamenskikh’s property developer, Sobha Realty, celebrated the Russian-driven real estate boom in Dubai by erecting a St. Miniature Basil and artificial snow outside the business office. The part of the man-made island called Palm Jumeirah is packed with Russian restaurants and nightclubs, one of which was packed on a recent Wednesday night when guests ordered a $1,200 bottle of Dom Pérignon Champagne. la that the dancing waiters carry flares.
When a drunken guest shouted, “Glory to Ukraine!” The guards quickly sent him out.
“You get the feeling that they bury their heads in the sand,” says Dmytro Kotelenets, a Ukrainian entertainment producer who moved to Dubai with his family, of the Russians around him. “Either they don’t want to pay attention to what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine, or they think nothing has changed.”
In his state-of-the-art speech last month, Putin urged the wealthy in Russia to “become one with the Motherland” and bring back their financial assets, rather than seeing Russia as “simply a source of income” from abroad.
In fact, many of Russia’s wealthy have simply moved their lives to the United Arab Emirates, which – like the rest of the Middle East – has refused to join the sanctions. of the West to Moscow.
“I’m in Dubai, I’m chilled,” are the lyrics of the current number one song in Russia, according to Apple Music. “Yes, I’m rich, and I don’t hide it.”
Emirates has a population out of about 10 million people, of which only about one million are Emirati citizens. The rest are foreigners, including millions of Indians and Pakistanis, and a small number of Europeans and Americans.
New York Times flight record analysis Last spring saw the United Arab Emirates become the top destination for private flights out of Russia in the weeks following the invasion, starting February 24, 2022. Since Meanwhile, the country’s appeal is only growing.
Russian government statistics show that Russians made 1.2 million trips to the United Arab Emirates by 2022, compared with 1 million in the year before the 2019 pandemic. Many of those This traveler has left his mark: Russians are the top buyers of non-resident property in Dubai in 2022 according to Russian government statistics. nationality, according to Betterhomes, a brokerage firm in Dubai.
First, there are the tycoons. Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian coal and fertilizer billionaire, moved to the United Arab Emirates last year after sanctions forced him to leave his longtime hometown of Switzerland. Last month, in the silent lobby of an exclusive resort, another fined Russian businessman said he had come to the city for a birthday party.
Russian officials and their families also visit, though they try to avoid drawing attention to their presence, and for good reason: In Russia’s northwestern Vologda region, the United Russia party The pro-Kremlin has expelled two local lawmakers after social media posts listed them in Dubai. One of them, Russian journalists is researching their article reportwas on vacation there with Ksenia Shoigu, the daughter of the Russian defense minister.
Elites cross the street at Angel Cakes, an Instagram-friendly cafe that Mr. Tutkov, an advertising entrepreneur, has opened on a man-made island called Bluewaters in the shadow of the world’s tallest Ferris wheel . A frequent visitor of the cafe, the former chairman of a large Russian company, quipped: “Dubai is becoming part of Russia outside of Russia.”
Mr Tutkov dismissed the idea that sanctions had destroyed the Russian economy as an “illusion”. His advertising agency, he said, is profiting as companies race to fill the void left by Western corporations pulling out of Russia. His clients include Haier, a Chinese home appliance maker trying to break into a market already dominated by older brands.
Sanctions on the financial system also proved unchallenged. Last summer, the the ruble soars to historic highs against the dollar. Mr. Tutkov said he took advantage of the exchange rate by using unsanctioned Russian banks to transfer part of his advertising agency’s profits to Dubai.
“We changed it to dollars and moved them here,” he said. “In dollars, we made a huge profit, you know? And everyone did this.”
Mr. Tutkov and his family were planning a summer vacation in Moscow. But after Mr. Putin’s draft last fall, he was no longer certain he would return.
“These are huge risks,” said Mr. Tutkov, 39. What if you can’t leave or they send you into the army or something?”
The diaspora also includes lower-income earners, among them art, tech workers and employees of Western companies that have moved offices in Moscow to the city.
Dmitri Balakirev, who works in technology in the Ural Mountains, left Russia because of his opposition to the war and came to Dubai because he had previously visited thanks to direct flights from his city.
Mr. Balakirev decided to stay and set up a real estate brokerage company. He assesses that direct flights to Russia will likely be maintained, allowing him to stay in touch with his loved ones. And he considers it a place where he can make a living.
United Arab Emirates officials say that their banks follow all rules regarding US sanctions. Indeed, many Russian emigrants say that one of the hardest parts of moving to Dubai is opening a bank account, given the months-long wait due to the banks’ exacting compliance requirements.
“There are many Russians who are not sanctioned and are interested in safer havens,” said Anwar Gargash, the Emirates president’s diplomatic adviser. told reporters last year.
Among those who found a landing in Dubai last year was Russian pop star Daria Zoteyeva, Russia’s number one hit singer today. She is currently living in a luxury housing complex under construction in the desert. At night, a light show shines over the Burj Khalifa, the tallest skyscraper in the world, in the distance.
To make music, Zoteyeva said in an interview on a roadside bench, “you need to be in a good mood.” She continued, Dubai is a “sunny place” where war “doesn’t affect you.” She declined to take a stance on the war, which she called “this whole situation.”
“It was to avoid abandoning my audience and to make money,” she said, explaining her silence. “Because that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money.”
Vivian Nereim Contribution reports from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Alina Lobzina from London.
