The Bell reported that the human rights project “Go Forest” (“Идите лесом”), which helps people refuse a summons or leave the country, is now receiving 160–180 requests a day. According to the project’s founder, Grigory Sverdlin, this is about one and a half times more than in the spring.
The head of the project helping Russian emigrants, “Ark” (“Ковчег”), Anastasia Burakova, called August and September the peak months by number of requests since mid-2023. She told The Bell that the noticeable growth began in July, while departures themselves are still much lower than in September 2022 after the announcement of partial mobilization.
According to her, the composition of requests has also changed: younger people more often contact the project with questions about studying abroad as a path to emigration, as well as doctors who need to legalize their educational documents and find work abroad. Since June, “Go Forest” has also been tracking corporate departures, when companies send employees to work remotely for several months.
Against the backdrop of preparations for the September Duma elections, rumors of a new mobilization intensified after a Bloomberg report on September 18 that Russia was allegedly preparing to draft an additional 300,000 people by the end of the year. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov then denied this, saying: “No. There are no such plans”.
The Bell, citing data from Wordstat, пишет that the query “mobilization” in Yandex was searched almost 50 million times in September 2022, and in July 2026 — 3.4 million times, in August — 2.6 million. The picture differs by destination: in July 2026, there were 3,112 queries about moving to Georgia, 4.4–4.8 thousand to Kazakhstan, 2,528 to Armenia, while Serbia stood out with 8,416 queries and remained above any month in 2022.
Google Trends shows the same trend: interest in the query “mobilization” in Russia is now about three times lower than the September 2022 peak, and Serbia remains the only one of the four destinations for which interest is higher than during the first wave. At the same time, the actual flow into the country also increased: according to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, in July 2026 Russians made 21,525 check-ins at accommodation facilities — 30.4% more than a year earlier, and the number of overnight stays increased by 32.1%.
From January to July, arrivals from Russia increased by 20.9% year on year. This statistic counts registrations through the eTurista administrative system, so one person who changed several places may be counted several times, while those who rented an apartment directly are not included.
The Serbian project KarticaTrebica, which maintains a guide to obtaining a residence permit in Serbia, analyzed open data from the Unified Account Register of the National Bank of Serbia and found that in Belgrade the number of relevant sole proprietor registrations rose in the summer to 230 per month in August. On an annual basis, that is 2,972 versus 2,657, meaning growth of about 12%, while the share of Russian sole proprietors among new registrations has been declining for the third year in a row — from 17.8% at the end of 2023 to 15.3%; in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, there is no growth either in absolute or relative terms.
Real estate agents interviewed by Meduza in Tbilisi (Georgia), Yerevan (Armenia), Belgrade and Novi Sad (Serbia), as well as in Almaty (Kazakhstan), say there has been a surge in demand since late July in the first four cities. In Belgrade, rent, according to one realtor, has risen by 20–30%; in Yerevan, according to another estimate, by 30–50% since the beginning of the year; whereas in Novi Sad prices are lower than in 2022, and in Almaty there is no visible increase in demand from Russians.
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