At the foot of the Burj al-Arab, a seven-star hotel in the shape of a sail facing the sea, the yachts have all returned home.
The weather is cool for March, around 16 degrees, and the wind is strong.
Julia, in her twenties, with a strict bun and a dark blue suit in the colors of her crew, is on forced rest on the dock.
She would almost joke about it.
We are far from the temperatures of Irkutsk in Siberia, where the thermometer can drop to minus 10 degrees in this season.
When ten months ago, she was asked to give up her job as a receptionist in Russia to serve petits fours on a yacht rented to rich clients in Dubai, she didn't hesitate for a second.
“Here, I earn four times more than in Russia,”
says the 24-year-old young woman, who found her job in a few days, during a vacation there, with Beno, a yacht and private jet rental company.
Mass exile
The young woman is not an isolated case.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the emirate's capital, long a refuge for millionaires, influencers looking to avoid paying taxes or crypto kings, has become a Russian city.
There are around 500,000 Russians there, according to unofficial estimates, for 3.6 million inhabitants.
This express diaspora first concerned oligarchs and businessmen, who came to protect their capital and businesses from international sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the latter not being applied in Dubai.
Nearly 8,500 millionaires have left…
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