Where Russia and Ukraine meet in Portugal
It’s called the “All Portugal” festival. But last Friday night, when I walked into the event, a rental space tucked inside Lisbon’s tourist-filled Alfama neighborhood, everything was written in Russian. Children’s books. Medical flyers. Menus. Everyone was speaking Russian too.
The festival, in its third year, confirmed what a friend who had moved to Portugal had told me -- that Russians were moving to Lisbon. He said they were changing the city, opening bars and restaurants, children’s schools, and other businesses. When we walked, the cobblestoned sidewalks slippery smooth from years of local Lisboetas’ steps, he pointed out some Russian businesses and said there were fewer Ukrainian flags hanging from city windows. His wife pointed out who was Russian at the restaurants we ate at. How do you know? I asked. She could hear it, she said. She’s Russian too.
The number of Russians in Portugal is small. In 2022, about 6,075 Russians lived in the country, according to a report by Portugal’s Immigration and Borders Service. That’s out of some 781,000 foreigners with legal status and another 143,000 applying, Portugal’s National Statistical System reports. But the number has likely risen with Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war now in its third year.
And the number doesn’t have to be high to present some concern amid Moscow’s evolving tools and threats, says Eric Rudenshiold, a former director in the White House National Security Council’s Russia office. “Russia is at war with Europe at this point,” he tells me by phone from Washington. “And so there are refugees, there are people fleeing. There are probably spies as well. We saw that in World War Two. We saw that during the Cold War. It wouldn't be a surprise. How you treat these people, how you assess this, is very complicated.”
Still, it is likely that the vast majority “are desperate to avoid the draft and the worst of Putinism,” he says. “You know, these are the people who could get out, who protested at [Russian opposition leader Alexei] Navalny's funeral against the wishes of the state.”
We spoke after European officials warned that Moscow is ramping up sabotage operations across the continent. That allegedly includes: Arson attacks at a Ukraine-tied business in London, an air-defense system facility in Germany, and an attempt at a paint plant in Poland; jammed GPS in Estonia; cyberattacks on NATO countries, especially disruptions of the European railway; and thwarted plots on U.S. military bases in Germany. Eric says Russia’s efforts are often meant to disrupt the transfer of arms and supplies to Ukraine, and to spur European dissent in the process -- and it is happening in concert with disinformation campaigns. Just on the cyber threats alone, “diffusing hackers into other countries, into lesser watched ones, would theoretically be a potential tactic that [Russia] could undertake.”
He believes that Moscow is calling upon sleeper cells and pro-Russian organizations to undertake active service. And even before the attempt to seize all of Ukraine started in 2022, a man from Portugal was doing dead drops for Russia in Slovenia, Janez Stušek, a former Director of Slovenian Intelligence and Security, told me last year. “We’re the weakest entry point,” he said of his country.
Eric and I speak about the ease of taking up residency in Portugal, especially for people in portable industries, such as artists or restaurant owners who can leave their rented spaces. Because of that ease, these professions have also been used as cover for Russian spies. Just this year alone, there have been reports of an alleged Russian spy who cooked at a restaurant in D.C., and another who ran an art gallery in Slovenia. “Put up an easel, start painting, and you're off to the races,” says Eric. “Or open a gallery, or rent a spot, and put up a bunch of paintings and you're an art dealer. Hire a chef, you've got a restaurant.” (Not everyone can be Russian oligarch and Putin ally Roman Abramovich, who naturalized in 2021.)
At the “All Portugal” festival, passing by tables of jewelry and clothing and books, I considered whether more was hidden from display. Did the old Russian proverb, “Trust but verify,” made popular in the U.S. by President Ronald Reagan, apply here? Then I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be questioning these vendors’ motives.
A jewelry designer at one table gave me a small smile. A Russian doctor at another table told me he moved to Portugal six years ago, and that some Ukrainian patients ask him whether he supports Putin or not. “We tell them no,” he said.
I met Eugenia, an artist working with linens, who said she left a life in St. Petersburg and wanted only her first name used in this report. On Feb. 24, 2022, Eugenia and her husband woke up and saw the news on their phones that Putin (she uses air quotes around the word president) launched a countrywide assault on Ukraine, she said. “The day before the war started, we thought, ‘What we will do if the war started?’ But we thought it was impossible.” She brought her cats to her mother’s home, then she and her spouse made their way to Turkey. They moved to Portugal a year ago. “We fell in love with the country,” Eugenia said. Her friends are mainly Russian and Portuguese. “Most of us don’t have friends from the other side because it can be difficult to speak with each other because of the war,” she tells me.
Then the melodious voice of “Aloe Vera,” a famous pop-rock band in Russia, cut into our conversation and drew visitors to the stage. Vera Musaelyan sang in a silver sequined dress, like shards of a mirror. A fan told me that her love songs sometimes blend romance with opposition or oppression — think kissing by the police while someone gets beat up. And art imitates life: Vera was previously married to Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was arrested in 2022 and remains — like all threats to Putin that are still breathing — locked away from the public, serving a long prison sentence. Vera is reportedly on a list of “undesirable” musical performers in Russia and is said to now be based in Berlin.
When she sang a song that was politically charged, the crowd went into a frenzy, dancing and singing her words with her. My friend’s eyes teared up as the energy mounted. “Look at how many people have been displaced because of Putin,” he said.
The story of Russians leaving Russia by choice, and their struggle to start over again by building a new community, has not been told enough. That story is more often tied to Ukrainians.
And indeed, earlier that day, we had driven to Cascais, a beach town just outside of Lisbon. Behind a high wall, dozens of Ukrainian women and children began a new life in the government-owned complex. I wasn’t allowed into “SOS Ukraine,” so I walked along the wall that separated us, taking photos of a row of pro-Ukraine stamps.
Then out of the front door came Anastasia, a Ukrainian from Kharkiv -- only she initially calls it Kharkov, because that’s the word in Russian, the sole language she speaks. She fled Ukraine in March 2022, and says that in Portugal, “there were unpleasant cases when I was reprimanded for not speaking Ukrainian.” Emotions have run high on that issue. Last year, a Ukrainian woman reportedly attacked another Ukrainian woman at a Portuguese amusement park, mistakenly assuming her Russian language meant she was a Russian who supported Putin.
Anastasia asked that I not publish her last name for security concerns. But she tells me that fellow Ukrainians are more accepting of her now. “I don’t want to divide people by nationality, especially not because of language.”
Back in Ukraine, she taught math, then went into the construction trade. In Portugal, she cleans apartments. She prefers physical labor, saying the movement helps keep her mind away from thoughts of the war. Now she and the other Ukrainian women who fled to Portugal must look for new homes — a softer version of displacement.
The center, which started hosting Ukrainian refugees a month into the war, is scheduled to close in September, she tells me. It comes as Portugal’s center-right Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who was sworn into office in April, tightened “wide-open doors” immigration regulations in early June. He outlawed a mechanism that allows migrants to arrive in the country without work and apply for residency after a year of paying social security.
The center used to house nearly 250 Ukrainians, but slowly they have moved out in anticipation of the closure, Ukrainian artist Elena Egor told me. Now there are only about 80 women and children there, she says — including her and Anastasia. It had been a place where volunteer social workers helped them with paperwork and placed their children in schools. “They even brought us ready-made food and we went once a week to a store where we could get food for free. And we are eternally grateful for all the help and support that Portugal provided from the first day of our stay to the last.”
A few days later, I would walk along a beach in southern Portugal, little fish scattering by my footsteps in the sand. I’d see a woman collecting clams for dinner. And at the tip of the island, two different currents would collide, making new, plaid-like patterns in the water. I thought of the Ukrainians and Russians coming from their own sides to the same country.
I asked Elena if she was going to the Russian festival later that night. “Of course not,” she said.