Vadim Nikitin has an op/ed running in the New York Times today on the departure of economist Sergei Guriev from Russia.  Will the persecution of the best and brightest attract popular sympathy?  Or have these liberal elites already benefitted too much from the system?

 But another key characteristic many of these men share is their former loyalty to the government they are now leaving: a stark reminder that Putinism was built with the massive complicity of the country’s liberal elite, much of which has stood by the regime through its worst excesses of the past decade.

Apart from the anti-corruption activist Aleksei Navalny and a few other exceptions, like the leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov, many of the high-profile victims of Putin’s latest purge had been enthusiastic fellow travelers, even enablers of the regime.