Considering Russian is not only spoken in Russia but also in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, what would be the safest country to travel to where you can speak Russian? Probably not Russia or Ukraine because of the war but yeah.
Estonia is like an extension of Finland (although using Russian there might be hard for the same reason). Kazakhstan has a good rep.
Moldova, Georgia and Armenia have fighting or unrest. Azerbaijan too although they kind of won, and Belarus is party to the whole Russia/Ukraine thing. Turkmenistan has a bad rep for other reasons and is hard to legally get into.
I know less about the other Baltics and 'stans from a safety perspective, although presumably the Baltics are similar to other poor areas of the EU.
Besides Tbilisi Georgia is nice, calm and pleasant. Kazakhstan is mostly a shithole, but if you’re not into interacting with people and enjoy flat steppes with endless views of nothing to the horizon, or beautiful mountains in the south, it’s a nice and calm place too.
I’ve been in Georgia a few years after the 2008 war and it was as safe as it gets. Only the younger people either didn’t speak or didn’t want to speak Russian. After 2022 there was an influx of Russian expats to the country, so the chances of finding someone to talk to should be even higher.
Even aside from the border issues, there’s definitive unrest right now. They’ve been spraying people with straight-up Camite. Definitely not recommendable just based on that.
It’s a shame, they have such an interesting history, and one that goes way way further back than most would guess.
Ah, you’re talking about the anti-government protests which started a year ago after the pro-Russian party took power. That’s a valid point, even though as far as I can see the protests have waned since then. The anniversary event this November was peaceful.