Capital Flight After Russia-Ukraine: The New Route of Money

Since 2022, billions in Russian and Ukrainian capital have reshaped property markets from Dubai to Belgrade. Tbilisi prices tripled, Dubai gained $6.3B, Turkey issued 179,000 Russian residence permits. Here's where the money actually went, and what's happening in 2025-2026.

Published on: April 23, 2026

Quick answer: After the 2022 invasion, Western sanctions closed traditional markets to Russian capital, and the money rerouted to four main destinations: Dubai (the high-ticket destination, with an estimated $6.3 billion of Russian property purchases), Turkey (the middle-class destination, where Turkey issued 179,000 Russian residence permits between 2022 and 2024), Georgia (the closest safe harbor, where average Tbilisi prices rose 210% year-over-year by November 2022), and Serbia (the long-term settler market, now residency-driven). Displaced Ukrainians formed a separate flow, with Poland the dominant destination. By 2025-2026 several first-wave flows are reversing, so the post-2022 premium is fading in Dubai, coastal Turkey and Tbilisi, while second-wave destinations like Serbia, Thailand and Bali are absorbing flows now.

When Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border in February 2022, the financial aftershock began almost immediately. Western sanctions closed traditional European and North American markets to Russian capital in weeks, not months. Credit cards stopped working. Bank transfers froze. Property purchases in London, Berlin, and the South of France became legally, or practically, impossible.

The money didn't disappear. It rerouted.

Four years on, the contours of that rerouting are visible in property registries, residence-permit databases, and inflation data across a handful of destinations that were, until recently, secondary markets for international real estate: Dubai, Turkey, Georgia, and Serbia. The flows were not evenly distributed. They were not uniformly welcomed. And in 2025 and 2026, several of them are now visibly reversing, creating a second-order opportunity that investors with longer memories are beginning to notice.

This is a map of where the money went, what it did to each market, and what happens next.

The starting gun: 2022

The scale of the initial displacement is difficult to exaggerate. In the first year after the invasion, Russian and Ukrainian citizens made what were, for many households, the largest financial decisions of their lives under extreme time pressure. Some were fleeing military mobilization. Some were protecting assets from sanctions. Some were simply hedging against a future that had become radically uncertain in 72 hours.

The immediate destinations sorted themselves by a small number of practical criteria: countries that accepted Russian passports without a visa, accepted Russian rubles or payments via non-sanctioned banking channels, offered a path to residency through property purchase, and, crucially, maintained flight connections when European airspace closed.

Five jurisdictions absorbed most of the initial wave: Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Serbia, and, for Ukrainians specifically, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Each played a different role.

Dubai: the high-ticket destination

The UAE emerged as the premier destination for larger fortunes. The combination was unusual: no personal income tax, no property tax, no capital gains tax, full freehold ownership for foreign nationals in designated areas, a Golden Visa program tied to property investment of AED 2 million (roughly €500,000) or more, and a political posture that condemned the invasion but did not join the sanctions regime.

The numbers that emerged over the following three years are striking. Investigations, including the ICIJ's "Dubai Unlocked" project, estimate that Russian nationals have placed approximately $6.3 billion into Dubai property since the invasion. In the first quarter of 2022 alone, Russian property purchases in Dubai reportedly surged 67% quarter-over-quarter. By mid-2022, Russian buyers had climbed into the top tier of foreign purchasers, briefly reaching #1 in some brokerage rankings.

The effect on the Dubai market was not subtle. Prime areas, Palm Jumeirah, Emirates Hills, Bluewaters Island, Downtown Dubai, saw double-digit appreciation. One dashboard of prime segments reported Q1 2025 price gains of 9.2% in the luxury segment alone. Brokers began informally describing pockets of the city as "Little Moscow."

But the narrative shifted through 2023 and 2024.

First, Russians became net sellers. By mid-to-late 2023, multiple luxury brokerages reported their Russian clients were selling more dirhams of property than they were buying. One broker documented $39.9 million in Russian purchases against $27.6 million in sales, an inversion of 2022 flows. Early buyers were taking profits on homes that had appreciated 30%+ in two years.

Second, Russian buyers slid down the league tables. Betterhomes data showed Russian passport holders dropping to the third-largest buyer group by 2023, behind Indian and British nationals, and continuing to decline through 2024.

Third, the market absorbed the outflow. By 2025, Indian, British, Chinese, Saudi, and Russian buyers were the top five nationalities in Dubai, with Russians now behind each of the others. The 2022 ruble-driven flood had been replaced by a more diversified pool. In 2025, Chinese and Russian nationals combined accounted for roughly 30% of luxury purchases per local brokerage analytics, but the Russian share had clearly peaked.

The lesson for investors: Dubai absorbed an enormous inflow of politically displaced capital, priced it in, and then moved past it. Prices held because other buyers stepped in. This is what a deep, liquid international market looks like.

Turkey: the middle-class destination

Turkey played a completely different role. If Dubai was where the wealthy went, Turkey was where the professional middle class went.

The Turkish government issued 179,000 residence permits to Russian citizens between 2022 and 2024. The 2022 figure alone, 99,900, was more than four times the 22,300 issued in 2021. Over the same period, Russians became the largest foreign purchasers of Turkish property, with roughly 16,310 residential sales to Russian citizens in the peak year of 2022.

Then the decline began, and it was steep:

• 2022: 16,310 Russian property purchases (peak)
• 2023: 10,560 purchases
• 2024: 4,867 purchases (down 53.9% YoY)
• 2025: 3,649 purchases (down 25% YoY)

In four years, annual Russian buying in Turkey fell by roughly 78% from its peak. Several forces drove the decline simultaneously. The citizenship-by-investment threshold was raised from $250,000 to $400,000 in mid-2022 and enforcement tightened. Turkish residence permits became harder to obtain in designated municipalities; more than 1,000 Turkish municipalities have imposed restrictions on permits for foreign nationals, explicitly framed as a response to housing pressure. The Turkish lira continued to depreciate, squeezing Russian buyers whose ruble-denominated savings had also weakened. And domestic inflation made Turkish real estate increasingly expensive in real terms, even as the lira weakened.

Despite the drop, Russians remained the single largest foreign buyer group in Turkey through 2025. And two quieter trends matter:

Ukrainians became a significant buyer group. In 2024, Ukrainian citizens purchased 1,631 Turkish properties, and in 2025 that figure was 1,541, placing Ukrainians consistently in the top three foreign buyer groups. The Ukrainian diaspora in Turkey now mirrors, on a smaller scale, the Russian pattern: permanent residence, children in school, businesses being established.

The market rebalanced. Foreign purchases overall fell to roughly 1.3% of total Turkish residential transactions in 2025, down from 4.4% at the 2022 peak. Turkey's housing market is now overwhelmingly domestic again, with total residential sales up 14.3% in 2025 to nearly 1.69 million units, more than offsetting the foreign decline.

The lesson for investors: Turkey's foreign-buyer premium has compressed materially. The post-2022 run-up was driven by a wave that has largely passed. Yields on Turkish residential property in Q1 2025 ran at 7.41% gross nationwide, above most Western European comparables, but that yield premium now reflects risk (lira volatility, inflation) rather than scarcity driven by a politically displaced buyer pool.

Georgia: the closest safe harbor, and the sharpest shock

Georgia is the case study in how a small economy absorbs a relative to its size enormous capital inflow over a compressed period.

By early April 2022, an estimated 100,000 Russian citizens had entered Georgia. The September 2022 mobilization announcement triggered a second wave; 148,000 Russians entered Georgia in a single quarter. Russian citizens registered more than 15,000 enterprises in Georgia in 2022 and more than 5,300 in just the first quarter of 2023.

The macroeconomic effect was immediate and visible. Georgia's GDP grew a record 10.1% in 2022 and 7.2% in the first seven months of 2023. The lari strengthened. Tax receipts surged. And the property market experienced what may be the sharpest single-year price spike of any capital city in recent European history: average property prices in Tbilisi rose 210% year-over-year as of November 2022.

That figure deserves to be read twice. In twelve months, Tbilisi residential prices nearly tripled.

The social backlash was swift. By late 2022 polls showed 93% of Georgians opposed allowing Russians to register businesses in the country. Opposition parties proposed visa requirements, real estate purchase bans, and in one case forced asset sales. Rising rents and cost-of-living inflation, whether or not formally attributable to Russian arrivals, dominated political debate heading into 2024 parliamentary elections.

Then, as in Dubai, the flows reversed. More than 30,000 Russians left Georgia during 2023, cutting the wartime Russian population by roughly a third. Remittances from Russia to Georgia collapsed from $317 million in December 2022 to $71 million in December 2023, a 78% year-over-year decline. Many who left Georgia relocated to Serbia, where the social climate was less hostile and a Russian-speaking tech community had taken root in Belgrade and Novi Sad.

Georgia's property market is now digesting this. Prices did not collapse, but the explosive upward trajectory ended. For long-dated investors, the question is whether Tbilisi settled at a permanently higher equilibrium or whether a secondary correction is still ahead.

The lesson for investors: Small markets absorb big flows violently in both directions. The same dynamic that drove a 210% Tbilisi spike in 2022 is now creating potential pockets of softness as the population that created the demand moves on.

Serbia: the long-term settler

Serbia has been the quietest but perhaps most consequential of the four destinations. It received fewer Russians than Turkey or Georgia in 2022, roughly 104,000 registered their stay, but the composition was different: higher-skilled, younger, more likely to stay, and more likely to buy rather than rent.

By 2024, Russian buyers had become the leading foreign group in Serbian property. Per Republic Geodetic Institute data cited in regional coverage, Russian real estate purchases in Serbia increased more than 10% over two quarters in 2024 alone, totaling roughly €85 million. Preferred destinations: Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Subotica.

The market effect: new construction in Serbia is averaging around €2,000 per square meter, with Belgrade commanding materially higher prices. Serbia's Apartment Price Index rose 6.0% year-over-year in Q3 2025, a pace described by authorities as "moderate and stable," a meaningful deceleration from the 2021-2022 peak but still substantially above Serbian wage growth. Inflation-adjusted real price growth was around 3.0%.

What's particularly telling is the motivation structure. Russian business media reporting cited by regional analysts suggest that for Serbia, Greece, and Cyprus, essentially all Russian property purchase inquiries are tied to obtaining a residence permit. This is not speculation or portfolio diversification. This is migration with asset attached.

By 2025, NF Group reported that Serbia had moved into second place globally as a destination where Russian investors deploy overseas property capital, ahead of Turkey, which had fallen to fourth.

The lesson for investors: Serbia is now a residency-driven market. The Russian community is putting down roots, not flipping condos. This creates a different kind of support for the market, rental demand, steady absorption, long holding periods, and different risks (concentration of demand in a handful of cities, regulatory exposure if Serbia's posture toward Russia changes under EU accession pressure).

Ukrainians: a separate and often-ignored flow

Most coverage of post-2022 capital flight focuses on Russian money. The Ukrainian story is different and less commercially driven but consequential.

Poland is the dominant destination. Poland hosted several million Ukrainian refugees at peak, and several years in, Ukrainian buyers have become one of the most active foreign groups in Polish residential property, particularly in Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław. Analyst coverage through 2025 places Ukrainians alongside Germans as the most significant foreign buyers in Polish residential. Ukrainian developers have also expanded operations into Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany; by 2024, roughly 22% of surveyed Ukrainian developers had established offices abroad, with another 13.9% planning to do so in 2025.

Poland's residential market has responded. Rents rose sharply through 2022 and 2023 as refugees absorbed rental stock, with some coverage documenting 15%+ increases over six-month windows in major cities. The private rental sector has expanded to over 23,000 institutionally-held apartments by Q3 2025, concentrated in Warsaw. Rental demand has broadly rebalanced by 2025, but the structural shift, a larger, more urbanized Ukrainian population permanently resident in Polish cities, is now priced into the market.

Smaller Ukrainian buyer flows are visible in Turkey (1,541 purchases in 2025), Germany, Portugal, and Spain. The pattern is different from the Russian flow: Ukrainian buyers are not sanctions-driven refugees from a financial system, they are war-displaced families seeking stability.

The second-order opportunity: 2025-2026

Four years into the rerouting, the macro picture is clearer. Aggregate Russian overseas property demand appears to be rebuilding after a 2023-2024 trough, helped by a strengthening ruble and ongoing pressure to diversify assets outside Russia. According to Prian.ru analyst data cited in industry coverage, Turkey still accounts for the largest share of Russian inquiries (around 27%, down from 32%), with the UAE at 9.2% and Thailand rising to 7.8%. But the geography has broadened, Egypt, Cambodia, Serbia, and Georgia are all taking meaningful inquiry share.

Meanwhile, Tranio data suggests Russian buyer inquiries for UAE property fell 21% and for Turkey fell 25% over the most recent comparison period. The cycle has turned.

For cross-border investors without a Russian or Ukrainian passport, three practical implications emerge:

1. The post-2022 premium is fading in the first-wave destinations. Properties in Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, coastal Turkey, and central Tbilisi that were bid up by sanctions-driven buyers are trading in markets where that buyer pool is no longer the marginal price-setter. This doesn't guarantee a correction, but it removes a tailwind.

2. Second-wave destinations may see flows just now. Thailand, Bali, and Serbia are currently absorbing flows that Turkey and Dubai absorbed in 2022-2023. Investors entering these markets in 2026 are front-running, not chasing.

3. Residency-linked purchases have different dynamics than investment purchases. A unit bought to qualify for a Golden Visa or a Serbian residence permit does not trade on yield. Its value is anchored to the regulatory threshold. When thresholds move, prices move. Turkey's experience, raising the CBI threshold from $250K to $400K in 2022, is the canonical example.

Where the new money is actually going in 2026

Four years of data allow a clearer map than the headlines suggest:

Tier 1, Mature absorption, flows reversing: Dubai, Istanbul, Antalya, Tbilisi. The post-2022 premium is substantially priced in and, in some segments, coming back out.

Tier 2, Active absorption, residency-driven: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Warsaw, Budapest, Limassol. Flows continue, driven by residency paths and Russian-speaking community networks rather than pure speculation.

Tier 3, Emerging destinations: Bangkok and Phuket, Bali, Cairo, certain Cambodian coastal cities. Russian overseas inquiry data shows these markets gaining share. Whether they develop into durable destinations or remain transit points depends on local policy.

The broader frame: capital displaced by geopolitical shock does not come home when the shock ends. It finds new equilibria. For investors who track where the equilibria are settling, the post-2022 rerouting is not just a historical curiosity, it's a live map of which markets are structurally repricing upward and which are approaching exhaustion.

The money has moved. The question is whether you've updated your map.

Frequently asked questions

Where did Russian capital go after the 2022 invasion?
Mainly to four markets: Dubai for larger fortunes (an estimated $6.3 billion of property purchases), Turkey for the professional middle class (179,000 Russian residence permits issued between 2022 and 2024), Georgia as the closest safe harbor, and Serbia as a longer-term settler destination. Displaced Ukrainians formed a separate flow, with Poland the dominant destination.

How much did property prices move in these markets?
The sharpest spike was Tbilisi, where average prices rose 210% year-over-year by November 2022. Dubai's prime areas saw double-digit appreciation, and Serbia's apartment price index was still rising 6.0% year-over-year in Q3 2025, a deceleration from the 2021-2022 peak.

Are these flows still continuing in 2026?
Several first-wave flows are reversing. Russians became net sellers in Dubai and slid down the buyer league tables, annual Russian buying in Turkey fell roughly 78% from its peak, and more than 30,000 Russians left Georgia during 2023. Demand is broadening toward second-wave destinations like Serbia, Thailand and Bali.

What does this mean for other cross-border investors?
The post-2022 premium is fading in first-wave destinations like Dubai, coastal Turkey and central Tbilisi, removing a tailwind. Second-wave markets such as Thailand, Bali and Serbia are absorbing flows now, and residency-linked purchases trade on regulatory thresholds rather than yield, so prices move when thresholds move.

JanusHermes operates across 50+ countries with specialized coverage of cross-border investment destinations including Turkey, Dubai, Georgia, Serbia, Poland, and emerging residency markets. Browse listings and compare residency programs with the Golden Visa Comparison tool at janushermes.com.

A note on the numbers: where no source is named, the market figures in this article (prices, yields, costs) are indicative estimates compiled from publicly available market data and industry reporting at the time of writing. Markets move and rules change, so treat them as a starting point and verify current figures with official sources before acting on them.