Between 2000 and 2014, approximately 1.8 million Russians left the country, according to Alina Polyakova, director of research for Europe and Eurasia at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Earlier this year she warned the trend was intensifying and called this outward migration of largely well-educated young people "a significant national security threat to the Russian Federation".

Calculating the numbers of people who have left the country is complicated by the fact that most retain their Russian passports even if they gain passports or residence permits in other countries. The State Statistics Service counted 350,000 emigrants in 2015 - 10 times more than in 2010.

On the top floor of a shopping mall in Berlin I meet another of the new emigres, 33-year-old Asya Parfenova. She used to be a journalist in Moscow and took part in the Election Observers movement in 2012 and 2013, reporting on voters being ferried around polling stations - apparently voting multiple times - and on suspiciously stuffed ballot boxes.

"I'm probably the only one of my election observer friends who has never been in prison," she says, raising an eyebrow.

Asya started a company which enabled her to get a working visa in Germany. She runs an Escape Room - a team game in which players are locked up and have to solve complex puzzles, as a clock is ticking, to win their freedom.

"I like rules which are clear and we don't have those in Russia," she says. "The government is always pushing the idea of stability but Russia is actually the least stable place now because nobody can predict what will happen tomorrow, how laws will be interpreted - and this is very damaging for business."

Parfenova adds that many successful entrepreneurs in Russia are now trying to get a foothold in foreign markets. "They are trying to prepare, as we say, a 'spare airport', a safe place to land in case there is no possibility of landing in Russia any more."

Another new slang word has crept into the Russian language, says Artemy Troitsky, Russia's leading music critic - poravalism, or "time-to-get-out-of-here-ism". A high-profile poravalist himself, Troitsky now lives in Estonia, like Chirikova.