“Obtaining an Israeli passport is the only way for my son not to go and fight in Ukraine,” says this woman with exhausted features, who did not wish to give her name to AFP for security reasons.
In the queue, Ivan Mitrofanov, 32, is also looking for proof on paper of the Jewish origins of his grandparents, a sesame that would open the doors of emigration to him.
As a computer scientist, he escapes for the moment the mobilization decreed on September 21 by Vladimir Putin, but he says he is “in a hurry to leave as long as the borders are open”. “My Russian passport being toxic in Europe, I will go to Israel which accepts us”, he says.
Since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine launched on February 24, “90% of our customers have come to find proof of their Jewish origins”, reveals to AFP Tatiana Kalajnikova, who works in a center for administrative procedures in the city. west of Moscow.
“They want to leave Russia at war for Israel, where the war never ends,” she says sarcastically, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
– Luxury of being Jewish –
In the first five months of the conflict, immigration applications from Ukraine and Russia tripled, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, which counted 20,000 arrivals from Russia and more than 12,000 from Ukraine.
In July, Russia ordered the dissolution of the Sokhnut Jewish Agency, which deals in particular with immigration assistance, accusing it of breaking the law.
Many Russian celebrities, including variety star Alla Pugacheva and her comedian husband Maxime Galkine, or rock star Andrei Makarevitch, left for Israel as soon as the Russian offensive in Ukraine began.
The announcement of an often chaotic and random mobilization has provoked a new wave of exile, with tens of thousands of Russians flocking for weeks to the borders of Georgia and Kazakhstan in particular.
Sign of the exodus, five new private agencies offering their services to facilitate departures to Israel have opened in recent months in Moscow.
A recognized specialist in Jewish genealogy in Russia, Vladimir Paley, 55, has been investigating the origins of his clients for 30 years. Since the start of the conflict, he has received “ten times more requests” from both Russians and Ukrainians.
Ironically, while being Jewish was frowned upon in the days of the USSR, having such origins has now become a luxury for Russians wanting to obtain an Israeli passport and escape the isolation of their country.
“With the mobilization, I mainly respond to calls from mothers seeking to expatriate their sons”, says Mr. Paley between two phone calls.
– “Panic fear” –
Unlike the 1990s economic exodus of a million people from the former USSR to Israel, the current wave is one of emigration ‘out of fear and loathing’, says one of Mr Paley’s clients , Mikhail, 40 years old.
A history teacher and author of books, Mikhail had never thought of emigration. But with the mobilization, “the step is taken” for this historian, who says he is “ready to emigrate” with wife and child.
Often taken in haste, the decision to emigrate also causes families to break up.
Former official of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, Andrei Troubetskoy, 58-year-old entrepreneur, tells AFP that he understood in February that he “no longer wanted to have anything to do with” his native country.
With his historian wife, he searches the archives to discover that his great-grandfather was a Hasidic Jew. The couple were preparing their file and learning Hebrew… but at the last moment, the wife refused and the couple divorced. Andreï will therefore leave alone.
“For most of these Russian emigrants, their decision to leave is impulsive”, analyzes sociologist Lioubov Boroussiak, professor at the Free Moscow University.
“Their goal is not to move to another country, but to leave Russia,” said the sociologist who surveyed 150 families who had chosen to leave since February. “It is an emigration of panic fear”.
