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Russian movie makers Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova and Dmitry Bogolyubov knew they had to depart Moscow the moment Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. “We were the next on the list,” the couple told AFP from their rented apartment in Rehovot, a sleepy Israeli town 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Tel Aviv. Once on the list of alleged “foreign agents,” you face a life of “self-censorship or, sooner or later, prison,” according to Bogolyubov, the director of the German-financed 2019 documentary “Town of Glory.” The film depicts President Vladimir Putin’s use of references to Nazi Germany to establish his authority in Russian villages.
As Moscow’s international isolation has grown, it has come to view all films made with foreign funding with suspicion, including documentary films, and the couple said theirs was no exception.
“We have felt threatened in recent years. People have been spying on us and photographing us on our film sets in recent months, in particular “Shishova-Bogolyubova stated this.
The couple decided to continue working in Russia, but they obtained Israeli citizenship as a precaution, owing to their Jewish ancestry.
The Law of Return in Israel grants citizenship to anyone who has at least one Jewish grandparent, a criterion that tens of thousands of people in both Russia and Ukraine meet.
Anti-war sentiment
According to immigration ministry figures, nearly 24,000 Ukrainians have fled to Israel since Russian troops invaded on February 24, with some, but not all, taking advantage of the law.
According to an Israeli immigration official, they have been joined by approximately 10,000 Russians.
“The majority of those are young graduates from the urban middle class,” said the official, who did not want to be identified.
Like the Bogolyubovs, linguist Olga Romanova, who was born in Moscow, had planned for the day when she would no longer feel safe in Russia.
Following Putin’s territorial expansion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, she applied for an Israeli passport.
“I always thought that day I would join my children in Israel, but then I realised that things were going wrong in Russia,” the 69-year-old told AFP in her son’s house outside Jerusalem, surrounded by photos of her grandchildren.
When the invasion began on February 24, “it was proof that I needed to leave as soon as possible.”
“The Ukrainian conflict is incongruent with my way of thinking and moral values.” “It makes me sick,” she said as she fought back tears.
