{"id":57475,"date":"2023-08-11T22:57:14","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T13:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/aug\/11\/russians-fleeing-putin-war-find-a-home-in-phuket-thailand-ukraine"},"modified":"2023-08-11T22:57:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T13:57:14","slug":"main-customers-russians-fleeing-putins-war-find-a-home-in-phuket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=57475","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Main customers\u2019: Russians fleeing Putin\u2019s war find a home in Phuket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thai island has had influx of those either trying to avoid fighting in Ukraine or feel unwelcome in Europe<\/p>\n<p>In the humid evenings on the Thai island of Phuket, Aleksei* often sits alone on his balcony, and wonders if the past 18 months have been a strange dream. Last year, he was living with his mother and siblings in Moscow, and working in an IT job in one of the city\u2019s skyscrapers. Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 changed everything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that moment I thought, \u2018OK what opportunities do I have here in Russia?\u2019 Go to war, which I don\u2019t want of course because Ukrainians are our brothers,\u201d he says. The alternative, to protest, was hopeless. \u201cIt is impossible to fight against the government in Russia,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/aug\/11\/russians-fleeing-putin-war-find-a-home-in-phuket-thailand-ukraine\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thai island has had influx of those either trying to avoid fighting in Ukraine or feel unwelcome in EuropeIn the humid evenings on the Thai island of Phuket, Aleksei* often sits alone on his balcony, and wonders if the past 18 months have been a strang&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3888,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[419,93,930],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-thailand","category-ukraine"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3888"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57495,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57475\/revisions\/57495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}