The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused large scale destruction, significant loss of life, and the displacement of millions of people. Besides those fleeing direct conflict in Ukraine, many individuals in Russia are also thought to have moved to third countries. In particular the exodus of skilled human capital, sometimes called brain drain, out of Russia may have a significant effect on the course of the war and the Russian economy in the long run. Yet quantifying brain drain, especially during crisis situations is generally difficult. This hinders our ability to understand its drivers and to anticipate its consequences. To address this gap, I draw on and extend a large scale dataset of the locations of highly active software developers collected in February 2021, one year before the invasion. Revisiting those developers that had been located in Russia in 2021, I confirm an ongoing exodus of developers from Russia in snapshots taken in June and November 2022. By November 11.1% of Russian developers list a new country, compared with 2.8% of developers from comparable countries in the region but not directly involved in the conflict. 13.2% of Russian developers have obscured their location (vs. 2.4% in the comparison set). Developers leaving Russia were significantly more active and central in the collaboration network than those who remain. This suggests that many of the most important developers have already left Russia. In some receiving countries the number of arrivals is significant: I estimate an increase in the number of local software developers of 42% in Armenia, 60% in Cyprus and 94% in Georgia.

翻译：俄罗斯入侵乌克兰造成了大规模破坏、重大人员伤亡以及数百万人流离失所。除逃离乌克兰直接冲突的人群外，许多在俄罗斯的个体也被认为已迁往第三国。尤其是俄罗斯境内技术型人力资本的外流——有时被称为"人才流失"，可能对战争进程及俄罗斯经济的长期发展产生显著影响。然而，量化人才流失（特别是在危机情境下）通常十分困难，这阻碍了我们理解其驱动因素并预判其后果。为弥补这一研究空白，我借用了入侵发生前一年（2021年2月）收集的高活跃软件开发者位置的大规模数据集，并对其进行了扩展。追踪那些曾在2021年定位在俄罗斯的开发者，我在2022年6月和11月的快照数据中确认了开发者持续从俄罗斯外流的趋势。截至2022年11月，11.1%的俄罗斯开发者标注了新国家，而来自该地区未直接卷入冲突的对照国家的开发者中，这一比例仅为2.8%；13.2%的俄罗斯开发者隐藏了其位置（对照集为2.4%）。离开俄罗斯的开发者在其协作网络中的活跃度和中心性显著高于留守者，这表明许多最具影响力的开发者已离开俄罗斯。在某些接收国，抵达人数相当可观：据估算，亚美尼亚本地软件开发者数量增长了42%，塞浦路斯增长60%，格鲁吉亚增长94%。