Some Russian IT specialists returning home - Digital Development Ministry

MOSCOW. June 20 (Interfax) - Russian Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev has said that a "quite significant" number of IT specialists who left the country last year have returned.

"Good news: while we were working, they started coming back. We are seeing this from the figures on recruitment platforms. [...] I think these are quite significant numbers. We are talking to IT companies, and they say that many are returning on their own now," Shadayev said at a forum titled "CNews Forum Cases: the experience of IT leaders," on Tuesday.

The ministry will be able to say exactly how many have returned "from the first and second outgoing waves" over the next two weeks, he said.

"There are many factors [at work] here: both the government providing assurances that there will be no mobilization, and that during the previous mobilization we provided guarantees of deferrals for IT people, and overall I think that conditions for working and living in Russia are much better. That is why there was no need for such a separate [relocation] program," Shadayev said.