PHUKET, Thailand — Ekaterina Mittsel went over her 6-year-old daughter’s routine as she waited in line to pick her up from school in Thailand’s tropical heat. Mondays are for choir practice, Tuesdays and Thursdays for gymnastics. Wednesdays and Saturdays are for Russian lessons — just in case the family ever decides to return home.
The Mittsels are among hundreds of thousands of Russians who left the country after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and are part of the approximately 30,000 Russian immigrants living on Phuket, a tourist island in southern Thailand. Many see the place as calmer than Bali, Indonesia; cheaper than Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates; and more welcoming than Europe.
Also read:
Continues after advertising
“We joke that we meet our friends here more often than we did in Moscow,” Mittsel, 36, said during an interview at the family bungalow, located on a hillside overlooking Phuket’s south coast.
Signs of Russian influence are all over the island, which was already a popular destination for Russians even before the war: Russian saunas that thrive despite the tropical climate, Russian markets selling ingredients from their home country, and daily flights to Phuket operated by Russian state airline Aeroflot. Seaside restaurants serve ice-cold borsch, and some Russian pop stars and rappers have included the island on their international tours.
But as the Russian community has grown in Phuket, so has local resentment over Russians accumulating property, opening businesses and — according to critics — overusing the country’s visa policy to work illegally. (Thailand’s Foreign Ministry declined to directly answer questions about allegations of visa fraud on the island.)
This resentment has contributed to a sense of transience that hangs over the Russian community in Phuket. Russians who have residency visas, including the Mittsels, said in interviews that they do not see the island as a permanent home. And Russians on short-term stays face pressure because of the government’s crackdown on tourist visas.
The Thai government has halved the visa-free period for tourists, from 60 to 30 days. The change could affect many of the approximately 15,000 Russians who, according to the Russian consulate in Phuket, live on the island without long-stay visas. Some are young people who left Russia to escape military conscription.
Evgenii, a 39-year-old engineer who asked that his surname not be used for fear of reprisals, said he left Russia in 2022 and traveled to different European countries before settling in Phuket. He worked for around six months in a real estate agency, but had to quit his job to temporarily leave the country and renew his visa exemption, which was about to expire.
Continues after advertising
“I’m good at this,” he said, referring to working in real estate. “But I’m always thinking about crossing the border.”
Some of the young Russians who remain in Phuket attend Orthodox Church services on Sundays and then stay for a lunch of rice and clam chowder. One man said he trained at one of the island’s Muay Thai gyms using a 90-day visa offered by the government to amateur fighters.
As their visa exemptions expire, many Russians pay $150 to be taken to the border and back, restarting their stay — a recurring and burdensome expense for young people who survive on irregular work. Evgenii said he would go to Vietnam to evaluate his options for remaining in Thailand.
Continues after advertising
“Either I go back to Phuket with a visa, or I pack my things and move on,” he said.
Thaneth Tantipiriyakit, president of a provincial tourism association that represents businesses in Phuket, said the group had received complaints from locals about the visa-free policy.
“Whenever a foreigner misbehaves, they blame it on the visa exemption,” he said, adding that Russians have become a visible target in part because they are the island’s largest tourist group. Similar resentment has emerged in Bali, the Indonesian island that once welcomed Russians and Ukrainians fleeing war.
Continues after advertising
In Phuket, some residents also blame Russians for rising property prices, which have made housing unaffordable for many Thais.
The center of Russian social life in Phuket, Bang Tao, has earned the nickname Thai Rublyovka, in reference to Moscow’s most exclusive neighborhood. Four years ago, the area was just an empty strip of land by the sea. Now there are resorts, commercial areas, villas in gated communities and luxury condominiums.
Russian buyers accounted for more than half of property sales in Phuket in the first year of the war in Ukraine, according to the Thai Property Information Center, a government research body. The price of land on the island rose by at least 20% that year, the agency reported.
Continues after advertising
Maksim Shatilov, from St. Petersburg, Russia, and owner of a real estate agency in Phuket targeting Russian families, has seen his business soar over the past four years.
“After the war started, there weren’t many places where you could feel free as a Russian,” he said.
Russian money was in evidence on a recent night at Come Leo Come, a Russian-style club-restaurant in Bang Tao owned by a Ukrainian. Customers arrived in sports cars, and high heels were the implicit dress code for women.
In the dining room, with low lighting and velvet-covered walls, Russian-speaking waiters offered shots of tequila and premium vodka, as well as platters of sashimi and caviar, while Thai staff worked behind the scenes. Dancers displayed bottles of champagne with sparkling candles while two saxophonists played on the bar counter.
Despite having built his fortune in Phuket, Shatilov, 31, said it would not be his forever home. But he and his wife, Alona Myronenko, cannot return to Russia, in part because she is a Ukrainian citizen.
“Today, the place I really want to travel to is Moscow,” he said, “but I don’t feel safe.”
Mittsel said his family also feels the call of home.
They left Russia in 2022 because her husband, a software engineer at an American technology company, was no longer able to receive payment locally after US sanctions blocked several Russian banks from the Swift payments system.
After they settled in Phuket — the setting of the most recent season of “The White Lotus” — other Russian friends joined them in search of stability to raise their families.
At the end of each school year, the Mittsels consider returning to Russia rather than renewing their visas. They visit the country every summer to see their parents, but their daughter misses ice skating and playing in the snow. Last year, Mittsel took her to a winter festival at a mall in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, to play in artificial snow.
Until now, they decided to stay, worried that she would have difficulty adapting to Russian schools.
Mittsel said he misses Moscow’s opera, ballet and music scene. But he doesn’t miss the ballads. So she and her husband rarely make the long journey from their home on the southern tip of the island to the exclusive clubs of Bang Tao.
“I don’t have that kind of clothes,” she said. “I left everything in Russia, on purpose.”
c.2026 The New York Times Company
