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The Russian Draft Dodgers Who Fled to Paradise
Foreign tourists near Denpasar, on Indonesia’s Bali island, on August 3, 2024. (Sonny Tumbelaka via Getty Images)

The Russian Draft Dodgers Who Fled to Paradise

“It’s not my war. I didn’t start it.”

ZIN Café, an open-air watering hole in Bali, Indonesia, is best known for its matcha lava cake, rooftop bar, and suntanned, draft-dodging Russian patrons.

“Will I fight for my country? I don’t think so,” Alexei Kliui, 38, told me. “It’s not my war. I didn’t start it.”

Plus, there’s gorgeous, sprawling Canggu Beach, which you can see from our wicker chairs; the girls wandering around in bikinis; and the lava cake, which (like the tuna poke bowl) is excellent.

On top of that, rent in this tropical paradise just 581 miles south of the equator is reasonable: fully furnished two- and three-bedroom apartments and guesthouses, often with a pool, run less than $2,000 a month.

Hence, the influx of Russians, such as Kliui, who was a pro boxer and personal trainer back in the Russian Far East and now works for a real estate company.

“I am happy in Bali, and I do not want to return to Russia,” he said.

Russians have been flocking to Bali, as they have to Turkey, Thailand, Cyprus, and Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh, in search of cheap getaways since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

But after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the lifting of the Covid quarantine restrictions just over a month later, and the October 2022 mobilization of 300,000 military-age men, the number of Russian visitors skyrocketed. While precise figures are hard to come by, an estimated 100,000 Russians decamped to Bali in the year following the outbreak of war; many more have come since then. Russians now comprise the second-largest group of outsiders on the island, just behind Australians.

Dima Larin, a tatted, 37-year-old YouTube influencer with over 2 million followers, portrayed Canggu, the epicenter of the Russian expat community, as “more expensive, noisier,” with “more traffic jams, more expensive shops and restaurants”—including Russian spots that feature blini, Russian pancakes usually eaten with caviar, herring, or jam (not at the same time).

The Russian Draft Dodgers Who Fled to Paradise
Dima Larin, a YouTuber and Russian expat living in Bali. (Brandon Caro for The Free Press)

Earlier this year, an anonymous troll changed the village’s name from Canggu to New Moscow on Google Maps before irate locals changed it back. This was in keeping with worsening relations between Russians and Indonesians, who accuse the Russians of public drunkenness and cultural insensitivity, among other things. “Whenever we get reports about a foreigner behaving badly, it’s almost always Russian,” a police officer told CNN in 2023. (Last year, a Russian man posted a photo of himself, partially nude, atop Mount Agung, a sacred place to Bali’s Hindu majority. He was deported; whether he ended up back in Russia is unclear.)

But Larin told me he’s not here for the beaches, the nightlife, or the food.

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