‘How to leave Russia’ Google searches surge in the country as Putin declares partial military mobilization – Business Insider September 21, 2022

I saw this recently on Business Insider – ‘How to leave Russia’ Google searches surge in the country as Putin declares partial military mobilization – Business Insider September 21, 2022: https://africa.businessinsider.com/politics/how-to-leave-russia-google-searches-surge-in-the-country-as-putin-declares-partial/wv2s29j/ Longer article

BRITNEY NGUYEN September 21, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin was supposed to give a speech to the nation on Tuesday night.

Google searches for “How to leave Russia” spiked in Russia in the time leading up to his expected address.Putin was expected to announce “martial law” and “mobilization,” the latter of which he did Wednesday morning.

In the time leading up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected speech to the nation on Tuesday night, Google searches for the Russian phrase How to leave Russia spiked in the country.

The peak for searches was around 6 pm Moscow time, according to Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit, which first flagged the increase.

Putin was supposed to make his address Tuesday night, but moved it to Wednesday morning. He then announced a partial military mobilization of 300,000 reservists that would be drafted to fight in Ukraine.

Before his expected speech on Tuesday, Russian lawmakers had passed legislation around “martial law” and “mobilization,” that likely prompted the Google searches. Google is only the second most-visited search engine in Russia behind Yandex.

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