Russia wants to recall emigrated computer specialists to their homeland

With a new law Russia wants to ban it smart working. This is an attempt to recall some of the approximately 100 thousand workers and workers of the IT sector who fled abroad since February 2022, following theinvasion ofUkraineand after the forced mobilization of reservists, which began in September.

While the sector has been in crisis for months now, Moscow has decided to try to revive it by forcing programmers, developers, web designers and other IT specialists to return to the homeland. Indeed, it reads on Reuterssome of the more extremist lawmakers would like completely ban these workers from leaving Russiato prevent them from being used by companies from NATO countries and sharing sensitive information.

But with around 100,000 specialists already abroad, the Kremlin should start training programmes forced return to bring everyone back. An infeasible plan, for which the authorities could threaten layoffs or raise income taxes of those who work for Russian companies from abroad. The proposal was made by Vyacheslav Volodin, a party colleague of President Vladimir Putin and an influential speaker of the Duma, Russia’s parliament.

However, based on testimonials collected by Reuters, many of the Russian computer specialists emigrated to Argentina they would rather quit than return home or pay more taxes in Moscow. This is the case of a twenty-six-year-old designer named Yulia, who defined the Kremlin’s ultimatums as a request for “negotiate with terrorists: ‘Come back or we will make your job impossible, for your company and your employees’”. While a young freelancer explained that he stopped paying taxes in Russia, why “when you pay taxes you support the state and its military expansion. I’m not paying and I’m not going to.”