Ya, I hope it works out too. High risk, high reward in their situation. I suspect that they are tight on money, maybe trying to maintain a Western lifestyle and unexpected expenses ate into their savings.
Their house in the “American Village” cost around $230-255k USD to build, they can’t legally work until they get permanent residency (and learn Russian…..), the area they live in is basically an upscale summer house/dacha neighborhood over an hour away from Moscow with no shops, nothing to do, and they don’t even have a car which also leads me to believe they have money issues or something. Another reason not to move to the middle of nowhere, and yet that is what these English-speaking expat channels recommend.
In such a situation, the sign-on bonus of 3-5x the average salary (45-65k USD) and guaranteed citizenship was probably tempting. They probably didn’t realize the cushy military jobs weren’t going to him. If he survives and they can make it through this, they’ll probably be ok.
She made another video about struggling with alcoholism again since her husband left. I pray they can struggle and overcome this difficult time.
You must have faith, common sense, and a strong personality to survive. If your coping mechanisms are crying, whining, despondency, etc., it is not going to work out. If you plan everything off best case scenarios, it is going to be painful.
I spoke with a family earlier this year who is coming back to the US. They moved to the middle of nowhere with 4 kids approaching college age with 0 Russian fluency and almost got divorced over the stress. They have to start over in their 40s.
You better know what you’re doing, there’s no home field advantage.