Papers in Innovation Studies,
Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s exports in ICT services, one of few internationally competitive sectors not based on natural resources, fell from US$7.23 billion in 2021 to US$2.70 billion in 2025, while those of Georgia, Armenia and Montenegro together rose from US$0.72 billion to US$2.99 billion. Relying on synthetic controls, we provide evidence that the gains of these countries were linked to a mass exodus of Russian IT developers, who were able to enter these countries visa-free and stay for extended periods. Our evidence shows that in Georgia, Armenia and Montenegro, ICT exports exceeded their synthetic counterfactuals by about US$3.3 billion in 2022-2024. Additional analyses on a smaller set of control countries show evidence that this effect persists in 2025. Moreover, about 42,000 additional developer accounts appeared on GitHub, an increase of 40 % over the three countries’ 2021 stock. Finally, we provide evidence that developers also transferred their international networks: collaboration per developer with partners outside Russia and Belarus increased nearly fourfold, while the number of partner economies rose by 19. Most of the new ties lead to Europe and North America rather than to Russia. The effects persisted completely or at least partially until the end of our observation period.

Keywords: Skilled migration; ICT services; Synthetic control; Sanctions; Software developers; Russia

JEL-codes: F14; F22; J61

Language: English

57 pages, October 12, 2026

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