Kazakhstan is an easy place for Russians to run

probably safe to say the numbers of those who have left Russia -- especially in the recent days -- is in millions.

— Bakhti Nishanov (@b_nishanov) September 23, 2022

This makes sense, as it looks like the "partial mobilization" seems to be primarily targeting outlying regions in Russia where non-Russian minorities live. Kazakhstan has a long border with Russia, that is almost entirely places with large non-Russian propulations. Plus, Russian citizens can cross the border with Kazakhstan without a visa, so it is an easy place to run.

Still, Kazakhstan is a big country with a really low population of 18.5 million (to get a sense of how big and empty it is, it has the land area of 2/3 of the continental U.S. with a population that is smaller than just New York State). If just a million of the Russians entering Kazakhstan decided to stay (and didn't use KZ as a transit point to somewhere else), that would be a significant (over 5%) increase in the country's population which would have all sorts of effects on KZ.