Russian Migration Policy at the Crossroads: Trends and Regional Repercussions

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has strained its migration policies, amplifying longstanding demographic decline and labour shortages. The country faces acute needs for human capital, short- and long-term, with birth rates at historic lows and emigration compounding the crisis. Efforts to mitigate these challenges – such as the Compatriots Program, aimed at attracting newcomers through fast-tracked citizenship offers, as well as seeking to settle over one million Ukrainians who have found themselves in Russia after the 2014 and 2022 invasions – have failed to deliver the numbers required to sustain the economy or meet military recruitment needs. Labour migrants, primarily from Central Asia but increasingly from elsewhere in the Global South, remain essential to the Russian workforce but face growing systemic discrimination, exploitation, and forced conscription into the Russian Armed Forces. The Crocus City Hall attack in early 2024 fuelled xenophobia, deterring migrants from the ex-Soviet south, depressing numbers of newcomers and destabilizing migration flows. Russia has used migration as a tool of geopolitical influence to expose ambiguities in Western policies but has no solutions for its own problems.

This policy brief highlights main directions in Russia’s migration policy since the 2022 invasion and underscores the implications of these developments for the Prague Process region. It calls for strategic action to strengthen cooperation with Central Asian states to create alternative labour migration pathways and reduce reliance on Russia, counter the use of migrants as a hybrid tool to challenge European members and work to return displaced Ukrainians, particularly children, home from Russia.