This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 6, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Vladimir Putin has mobilized an army, though not necessarily the one he intended,

as Russia prepares to conscript hundreds of thousands of Russians for the war in Ukraine,

a massive number of eligible men have decided they want no part of it and are attempting to leave.

Cato's Alex Narastas says Europe and the US should be welcoming these people both to drain

Russia of a key resource and let those people contribute to less restricted economies.

Vladimir Putin has pledged to raise additional soldiers for his war in Ukraine and that has

caused in some areas a large scale mobilization out of Russia.

How should Europe respond to that?

Europe should respond by making it a lot easier for Russians to leave Russia and come into Europe.

We've seen the opposite in some cases, so a lot of European countries have put stricter visa restrictions on Russians coming in and the country of Estonia banned visas for all Russians actually in August.

So I think Europe, not all European countries, I mean

Finland is still allowing Russians to enter across the land border. However, I

think they are taking the exact wrong approach.

Their justifications are to try to prevent spies from coming in from more information

about European military aid to the Ukrainians from going out.

And I understand those motivations, those make a lot of sense.

But the number of potential soldiers, of taxpayers, of other people who could support the Russian regime

directly or indirectly by their activities by remaining inside Russia. The benefits

to the Russian regime of blocking these people in or making it more difficult

from the leave, I think vastly outweighs any of the costs of additional espionage that could

...