Twenty-seven-year-old Russian reservist and former police officer Stanislav Bashilov simply climbed a fence on the Russian-Latvian border to get to the West. Staying there has been more difficult.
Independent Russian-language media channel Spektr.Press, which is based in Latvia, has produced an interesting report looking at the attitudes of Russian-speaking young people in the country.
A new round of EU sanctions is expected to take a bite out of the Belarusian economy. But the measures cutting off exports destined for Europe could also unintentionally be a boon to another Western adversary Russia.