Techies From Russia, Belarus, Find Solace In Uzbekistan. Can They Attract Western Outsourcers?

Techies From Russia, Belarus, Find Solace In Uzbekistan. Can They Attract Western Outsourcers?

Machine coding symbols on a wall at the headquarters of Internet security firm Kaspersky Lab in ... [+] Moscow. (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images It's a terrible time to be a Russian (or a Belorussian, for that matter). The war in Ukraine has led to massive sanctions against Russia, and an exit of Western companies like Ford, and capital, from the country as well. Even companies that are not sanctioned have faced their own sort of self-censorship, with outsourced software engineers particularly hard hit. No one wants to have an outsource partners in Russia anymore, as good (and low cost) as they are. It might look bad. Some Russians have left. Some have gone to Estonia. Others have spread out throughout Europe. And a handful have moved to Tashkent, of all places, an ancient city deep in Central Asia, in landlocked Uzbekistan. Map of Uzbekistan. A detail from the World Map provided by RAND McNALLY. Their government has spent a small fortune training IT workers, too, in hopes it can now pitch itself to Silicon Valley as an outsource partner. The tech talent is there. A lot of it is Russian anyway. And the English language skills are