People who left the West in search of the Russian dream

After moving to Russia, Leo’s family became one of the most visible examples of Western migration.

Russian state media filmed their asylum ceremony, and Leo publicly thanked President Putin for welcoming them. At the time, Leo believed he was helping to pioneer what he called “unprecedented immigration legislation.”

But the reality turned out to be more difficult than he had imagined.

In the weeks since they arrived, Leo says he was defrauded of 5 million rubles – about £52,000 ($66,000) – by contacts he believed left him homeless.

When I spoke to Leon earlier this year, he was living separately from his wife in the city of Ivanovo, and his older children had returned to America.

When asked if she lived up to his expectations, Leo described the past two years as the best and worst of his life.

He says he experienced many aspects of Russia by working in an Orthodox monastery, staying in a high-rise apartment, and later moving into a small Soviet-era apartment. Eventually he got a job as an English tutor.

He still speaks fondly of ordinary Russians, describing them as generous and hospitable. He thanked members of the church community who helped the family survive after losing all their savings, and remembers a woman who invited her young son to her home and taught him Russian for free.

“My heart is filled with love for these people,” he says.

But restrictions on access to information about the state of the Russian economy are increasing.

Leo is now reconsidering the role he played in promoting Western immigration to Russia.

“I believed the propaganda,” he told me, previously admitting he was “the guy writing the script.”

Although determined to stay in Russia with a sense of “destiny,” he says he now misses the freedoms that shaped the American personality.

“(In) Russia you don’t have these human rights values.”