By Thursday, the exodus became so chaotic, there were hardly any good friends left in the city. “Even if you told me yesterday morning that I should leave, I would not have listened to you. But now all of us either face conscription [into the military] or 15 years behind bars,” Shainyan told me on Thursday, boarding the plane with his boyfriend. Some mothers tried to convince their sons to run, others begged to their boys to stay and not abandon them. “This is going to be worse than the USSR. Putin will never stop fighting,” Svetlana Ozerova, a nurse from Kitai Gorod, told me.

Dziadko, his wife, Rain anchor Katerna Kotrikadze, and their children fled to Istanbul on Tuesday. They had received threatening messages, suggesting they were targets. “When we came back from Russia in 2019 to work at the only opposition television channel, we knew that by supporting [opposition leader] Aleksei Navalny we risked a lot,” Dziadko told me. “And even after authorities designated our channel as a ‘foreign agent,’ we kept our great, brave team and continued to work for our huge audience. But after Putin sent forces to Ukraine, we realized the situation completely came out of control. Now, Putin is totally unpredictable.”

Many Russian journalists panicked. People evacuated without time to pack — or think of the future.