Victoria Pich misses Moscow. She misses the city’s vast parks and trips to St. Petersburg on the weekends. Given the choice today, she wouldn’t think twice before trading the California sunshine for the Russian capital’s gray skies. “The snow, the slush, the cold,” she said. “I loved it all.”

The number of young adults who want to leave Russia is at a 10-year high — more than half of 18 to 24-year-olds would emigrate if they had the opportunity — but Pich never dreamed of a better life abroad. She fled Russia out of fear.

Pich, 25, had been building up a viral video production business since 2013, when she moved to Moscow from a small town in the Urals. She now has nearly two million subscribers on YouTube. Most of her projects are entertainment videos, but she also produced a series of children’s programming titled “Real Talk.” 

On one episode of the show, posted to YouTube last spring, she invited a gay man to talk to children about his life. This led to the police investigating the channel for the crime of “sexual violence against minors,” punishable by between 12 and 20 years in prison. Pich is now on the run.