Unable to find work and feeling increasingly isolated from her relatives, Tatiana Lopatina has decided it is time to pack-up and move from Kazakhstan to her ancestral homeland: Russia. She will join the millions of ethnic Russians who have left Central Asia since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, dismayed by shrinking job opportunities and political marginalisation. Russians made up about a fifth of Central Asia's population at the time of the Soviet collapse, but that figure is now five percent, with tens of thousands more leaving each year. Since 2006, Russia has offered relocation allowances to those moving to the homeland of their parents or grandparents, and launched a new scheme with less stringent conditions last year, as uptake fell following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES