A Quebecer who had just obtained his Russian citizenship is seeing his dream shattered. He plans to leave Putin’s country, whose government has just withdrawn rights from foreigners like him.
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“Yesterday, for the first time, I said to myself that I should perhaps return to Canada indefinitely,” explains Julien*, a Quebecer who lives in Moscow with his wife whom he met in Russia.
The newspaper allowed him to tell his story on condition of anonymity, since a law adopted on March 4 in Russia prohibits the dissemination of “false information” on the Russian army, under penalty of 15 years in prison.
A broken dream
Julien has been passionate about Russia, its history and its language for ten years. It was when he heard the story of a Quebecer who had learned Russian in Siberia that he wanted to live in the land of the tsars.
“Since then, it’s been my dream [de devenir citoyen russe], he explains. I fell in love with Moscow, which is such a vibrant city,” adds the man who works as a teacher in the capital.
This dream, Julien realized it very recently, after a year and a half of steps to obtain dual citizenship. But he had no idea then that his host country was about to invade its neighbor, Ukraine.
In a few weeks, this military intervention came to “complicate” things for him, to the point where he is thinking “more and more” of returning to Quebec.
He has already lost rights
What has him most worried is another new law passed by the Putin government last week that prohibits anyone with a citizenship of one of the countries ‘hostile’ to Russia from buying or selling property. . Canada is on this blacklist.
He and his friends, many of whom are immigrants, “are all more and more worried,” explains Julien, who fears that other rights will be taken away from him by this authoritarian regime.
“The general opinion of people I talk to is that the situation will get worse,” he said.
Steps for his wife
The Quebecer multiplies the steps to take his wife with him to Canada.
“The next step is to see if she will have the Canadian visa. I wrote to the embassy to try to speed up the process.
“I hope we’ll manage to get back, but for sure I won’t leave my wife behind,” he said.
*Name changed to preserve anonymity.
Penalties that are felt
Courtesy picture
Julien has found it harder to get cleaning supplies, as seen in these empty shelves he photographed in a Moscow grocery store.
While this is not the main reason he wants to return home, the heavy international economic sanctions imposed on Russia are felt in the daily lives of its citizens, according to Julien.
“It’s more difficult to have sanitary products, such as shampoos, soaps, creams, he explains. I’ve seen price increases of around 10-15% when I go to the grocery store. »
Also, his electricity bill has jumped 40% in a single month since the imposition of the sanctions. “It still makes a difference,” he says.
In terms of transport, he observed an increase of almost 50% in the price of taxis and also in the price of Russian Lada cars, which rose by 8%.