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Russian politicians have ramped up rhetoric against migrants in recent months with calls for more foreign-born workers to fight in the grueling war against Ukraine topping their list of demands. But as experts point out, Moscow’s labor-short economy needs migrants just as much as the military.
Four men fled to Kyrgyzstan to escape the draft. Do they see a future there? | 1843 magazine
In the initial months after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people left Russia. Some were fleeing the war’s economic repercussions or the country’s accelerated descent into authoritarianism, while others saw emigration as a moral necessity. Then, in September, Putin’s mobilization announcement set off a new wave of panic, causing another 700,000 or so to leave Russia in a span of just two weeks (though some have since returned).
Tens of thousands of men have ended up in places like Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet territory, that normally see few refugees but are willing to take them.
Russia is offering foreigners a bureaucracy-lite path to citizenship in exchange for a year's military service, but governments in Central Asia have warned citizens they could be jailed for participating in foreign wars.