Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency horrifies 27-year-old Alexei, according to dpa. "When that happens, I will emigrate," the computer specialist says. Many young Russians feel the same way. With parliamentary elections coming up on Sunday, anger and doubts about the leadership are rife. Observers even speak of an "escape from Putin." "We are being lied to from A to Z," gripes 32-year-old Oksana who, like many others, did not want her real name published. Oksana has a lot of worries - unfair elections, lack of opportunity, high inflation, corruption, rising food prices and sinking salaries. Above all, it is the fear of being governed for even longer by the power team of Putin and current Kremlin boss Dmitry Medvedev, without hope of change, which is pushing educated young people to leave Russia. Medvedev is the leading candidate for his and Putin's United Russia party in the parliamentary elections, while Putin is seeking the presidency in the March presidential election - meaning the two would switch jobs. In an October survey by the Levada opinion research centre, 22 per cent of those questioned said they wanted to emigrate - twice as many as at the end of the Soviet Union. About 1.5 million of Russia's 140 million people have left the country in recent years, experts estimate. Emigration is now seen as a serious problem, and the government is taking countermeasures. The danger of a brain drain is well recognized, said Andrei Nikitin, head of the Moscow Agency for Strategic Initiatives. The agency is tasked with helping educated people who have doubts about the Russian system, Nikitin told dpa and other media. "Extra structures must be created so that young and interested people with perspectives can carry out their ideas and proposals," Putin himself said recently, commenting on the role of the agency he created. Medvedev took the same line and promised greater modernization: "The problem is that we have to create the conditions to work in the homeland." Nikitin said Russia is trying to entice emigrants back home, with programmes such as a rebate on training costs for civil servants. One of the state's model projects is the new Skolkovo innovation and technology centre near Moscow, where Russia's best minds are meant to move modernization forward. But many more scientists would rather try their luck abroad. The loss of scientists is having a noticeable impact on research, the newspaper Kommersant said. Biologists, mathematicians and physicists complain about poor social conditions in Russia, oversized bureaucracy and the opaque allocation of research money in a corrupt scientific community. "Among those who have the chance to work abroad, 100 per cent leave the country," biologist Ilya Kolmanovsky told Kommersant. "I do not want my child to grow up in this country," says Alexander, from Moscow. But the 37-year-old does not have the money to emigrate, so he withdraws into his family life. Over the weekend, he heads for the family's little dacha, or second home, in the countryside. It's not the permanent escape he's hoping for, put perhaps it's the next best thing.
