Russians are extremely interested:
1) Ease way to move money. Even high corruption level did not help with avoiding high taxes and fees in that field anymore. At list for regular citizens.
2) Way to save money. Instability of Ruble is known, and regular citizen have no even a bit of trust in government regulation of it. 1998 year was harsh, and will not be forgotten for next 30-50 years (next 1 or 2 generations).
2a) Russian citizens cant trust the dollar, for their savings - that paranoia is in our genome. Looks like it good practise (my own paranoia
).
2b) We see, that for unknown reason Russian government trust dollar to much, and that makes us more suspicious to our government and dollar both. ( Russian mentality always counts government like somebody who wants to cheat you. And, of course, you should answer with cheating government when possible, but this is another story).
2c) We cant trust in euro, because it is wired to tight with IMF (and they wired to $).
2d) We cant trust in oil prices, because oil prices are instable.
2e) We hardly can use gold, diamonds and precious metals, - they are overtaxed (Prisons here are not so comfortable).
3) Opportunity for FREE (relatively) money. Price of electricity is steel low, relatively to European country's.
4) We just like to try something new (well, you should not be surprised - 1917, 1991 as fresh examples).
5) We are ambitious and lazy together. I am doubt that you will find any Russian immigrant working in some dumb house cleaning business more than 5 years after arriving in new country.
Well, there is always something else. Maybe i am mistaken somewhere. Feel free to discuss.