Putin's war in Ukraine leaves thousands of Russians cashless and stranded abroad
Phuket, Thailand — President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has led to suffering for his own people, too, including Russians who were overseas when it started. Many are still trying to get back home, after the West's counterattack — in the form of international sanctions — left them cashless.
As CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, with so many flights to Russia cancelled, there's no easy way for Russians to return before their money runs out.
Thousands of Russians are stranded in the popular tourist destination of Phuket, in Thailand. Palmer met some of them, and says the tropical beaches and turquoise seas don't look much like paradise when you're running out of money, with no way home.
Max Kiselyo is one of the Russians who has been trapped in Phuket by the fallout from his president's war in Ukraine. His bank cards stopped working when U.S.-led sanctions kicked in and Visa and Mastercard cut off Russian accounts.
Then he and his partner Artem Sedov found out that their flight — like most to Russia — was cancelled.
The pair are "kind of worried," Sedov admitted, "because we don't know what's going on… We don't feel safe."
Kiselyo said he was "scared to be in Russia," but he was also "scared to be here."
The resort island of Phuket has catered to Russian tourists for years, but the war has turned what should have been a vacation for Ulyana Malygina, into a nightmare.
"I'm worried for the future," she told Palmer. "I haven't figured out how we will live. I just don't know."
Malygina got money from an ATM just before Russian cards stopped working, so she can still feed her girls in their small rented house, but not everyone is so lucky.
"I hear lots of stories, most of them sad," she told CBS News. "Some Russians don't have cash — don't even have money for food, and their cards are blocked."
Stranded Russians have set up an online group, "Stuck in Thailand," with advice on flights and cheap rooms, and not only for themselves.
"People have been helping both Russians and Ukrainians, it doesn't matter," said Malygina.
Resort owner Toke Terkelson is offering desperate Russians free beds. They tell him things they're not willing, for their own safety, to say to CBS News on camera.
"They are telling me they should get rid of Putin, of course," Terkelson told Palmer.
"They're ashamed" of the war, he said. "All of them are against it."
Kiselyo and Sedov recently got a discouraging message from family back home:
"Don't come," relatives told Kiselyo.
"Mine's the same," agreed his partner.
Their families told them it's not safe to be in Russia right now. Hard words to hear from loved ones far away, but for as long as they can afford it, they've decided to stay put.
The real urgency for stranded Russians is to get access to their money somehow, to either buy a ticket home, or survive abroad as they wait out the war.
