For over thirty years, labor migration has been one of the most important foundations of Russia’s economic and geopolitical influence in Central Asia. Millions of laborers comprising Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz citizens have contributed to closing the labor gap across Russia. This situation has made remittances indispensable for Central Asian economies. This migration system has strengthened Moscow’s political influence by creating a long-term structural interdependence between Russia and the post-Soviet republics. Migration, along with institutions such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), has transformed Russia into the main center of attraction for post-Soviet Eurasia. The capacity to attract and retain labor from Central Asia has gained as much strategic importance as pipelines, military bases, and transport corridors.
As of 2023, more than 80% of migrant workers in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were working in Russia. In 2024, remittances accounted for 45% of Tajikistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the highest rate globally. This rate was 24% in Kyrgyzstan and 14% in Uzbekistan. This system created interdependence. While Russia gained access to a reliable workforce, Central Asian governments benefited from employment opportunities and stable financial revenues. [i]
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 altered this balance. Economic sanctions, demographic decline, military mobilization, and increasing internal security issues created political incentives to redefine migration through a national security discourse rather than an economic necessity. The war also empowered a new generation of ultranationalist actors, including military bloggers, and brought mainstream legitimacy to the Slavic-Orthodox sense of belonging. This understanding defines non-Slavic migrants as elements outside of society. The Crocus City Hall attack accelerated the securitization of Central Asian migration in Russian political discourse and contributed to the adoption of more restrictive migration measures. Migrants from Central Asia have increasingly been associated with terrorism, irregular migration, and internal security issues in public discourse.
These developments are now observed not only in policies but also in the migration flows themselves. In the first half of 2026, citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan made approximately 1.9 million work-related entries into Russia, and this number decreased by about 15% compared to the same period in 2025.[ii] This decline coincided with stricter migration rules and rising costs for workers. This situation indicates that the transformation in Russia’s post-2022 migration policy has begun to affect the scale of labor mobility.
This development poses a fundamental strategic dilemma: Why is Russia undermining a migration relationship that historically benefited both its economy and its influence over Central Asia? Although Central Asian labor maintains its economic importance for Russia, it is evaluated that the increasingly restrictive migration policies contradict Moscow’s long-term interests.
Even though the migrant workforce remains economically significant for Russia, domestic political incentives to control migration have increased. This situation reflects the Kremlin’s quest for political legitimacy during wartime. At a time when a prolonged war increases economic and societal costs, crackdowns on migrants allow for a visible display of state authority while redirecting public dissatisfaction toward politically more vulnerable communities. Moscow strengthens its domestic political legitimacy without directly addressing the structural consequences of the war by framing migrants as the source of security problems. Therefore, migration policy has simultaneously become both a security instrument and a political tool.
This situation creates a fundamental conflict of interest between Russia’s short-term domestic political interests and its long-term economic and geopolitical interests. In the short term, stricter migration controls may strengthen the perception of state authority, respond to security concerns, and satisfy nationalist demands. However, in the long term, these policies may increase Russia’s labor shortage regarding Central Asian workers and weaken the economic interdependence that historically allowed Moscow to exert its influence in the region. Therefore, Moscow might be willing to risk these costs by considering the short-term domestic political gains provided by securitization policies more important than the economic and geopolitical costs that may arise in the long term.
The 2023 Foreign Policy Concept forms the ideological basis of this transformation. Defining Russia as a “state-civilization” and emphasizing sovereignty, multipolarity, anti-hegemony, and cooperation with non-Western power centers, the document presents Russia as an autonomous pole in the emerging international order.[iii] In this context, Global South countries are no longer seen merely as economic partners, but as strategic actors participating in the construction of an international system less dependent on Western political and financial institutions. Accordingly, while prioritizing its diplomatic relations with organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russia is simultaneously expanding its bilateral partnerships across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Within this broader strategic vision, migration has acquired a new geopolitical function.
India constitutes one of the examples of this comprehensive transformation. Since 2022, New Delhi has become one of Russia’s most important strategic partners through expanding energy trade, defense cooperation, and coordination in BRICS and other multilateral platforms. For Moscow, the employment of Indian workers can demonstrate that despite Western sanctions and deteriorating relations with Europe, Russia has alternatives to its traditional post-Soviet migration networks. Therefore, India’s importance stems from its symbolic value as a representative of Russia’s broader Global South orientation rather than its capacity to replace the Central Asian workforce. The preference for India for unskilled labor is also based on the strong defense and economic relations between Moscow and New Delhi.[iv]
However, economic reality makes a large-scale substitution extremely difficult. Central Asian migrants possess advantages that Indian workers cannot easily acquire. Prominent among these are Russian language proficiency, deep-rooted migration networks, and decades of experience regarding Russia’s legal and administrative systems. Currently, no region has the scale and depth achieved by the labor relationship between Russia and Central Asia. For this reason, it would be more accurate to evaluate India’s growing role within the framework of Russia’s efforts to diversify its labor resources rather than replacing the Central Asian workforce. Moscow may make progress in reducing its dependence on specific migration networks; however, completely replacing the current structure based on Central Asian labor does not seem realistic in the short and medium term.
The consequences of this transformation are particularly important for Central Asia. For Uzbekistan, whose citizens constitute one of the largest migrant communities in Russia, the deterioration of migration conditions has reinforced Tashkent’s long-standing strategy to diversify its foreign partnerships. In recent years, while expanding labor agreements with Turkey, South Korea, Gulf Countries, and various European countries, Uzbekistan has also pursued a diversification policy in transportation via the Middle Corridor and the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway. Russia’s increasingly restrictive migration policy has therefore strengthened Tashkent’s broader foreign policy orientation aimed at reducing overdependence on any single external partner. Moscow’s migration strategy has unintentionally accelerated Tashkent’s multi-vector diplomacy.
Kazakhstan, on the other hand, faces a different strategic issue. Being a member of both the EAEU and the CSTO, Astana is in deep integration with Moscow. However, while simultaneously intensifying its cooperation with China, the European Union, Turkey, and Gulf countries, Kazakhstan actively supports the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. Russia’s increasing emphasis on its civilizational identity and its restrictive migration policies have encouraged Kazakhstan to further diversify its foreign partnerships without fundamentally abandoning Eurasian integration. Therefore, it is expected that Kazakhstan will pursue a more balanced foreign policy by both maintaining regional cooperation with Russia and engaging more with alternative economic and geopolitical partners.
For Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the situation presents a more complex picture. Both countries continue to be significantly more dependent on Russia’s labor market and remittance system. Especially for Tajikistan, the scale of dependence makes rapid diversification difficult. Although Russia is turning into an increasingly unpredictable destination for migrant workers, alternative labor markets do not yet appear to have reached a capacity capable of accommodating current migration flows. While Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have broader opportunities in institutionalizing alternative economic and migration relations, the structural dependencies of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan on Russia create a more limited room for maneuver in the process of diversifying external economic and labor markets.
The institutionalization of alternative migration corridors by Central Asian states could have consequences that go beyond remittances. As Central Asian states recently redirect migration flows to Europe, Turkey, South Korea, and the Gulf countries, Russia is gradually losing one of the most important channels of its economic and political influence. Unlike trade agreements or military alliances, migration creates everyday social ties that are difficult to replace once alternative destinations are institutionalized. This situation creates a fundamental paradox in Moscow’s strategy. The migration system that once strengthened Russia’s economic supremacy and political influence over Central Asia is now being gradually dismantled by the Kremlin’s own policies. If this trend continues, Russia’s position as the traditional and default destination for Central Asian workers is expected to weaken. In the long term, the region may transform from a Russia-centered geopolitical space into a more competitive geopolitical arena where Russia, China, Turkey, Gulf countries, the European Union, and India simultaneously exert influence.
In conclusion, Russia’s post-2022 migration policy reflects the broader transformation in Russian foreign policy where wartime legitimacy, civilizational identity, and geopolitical signaling take precedence over the logic of regional integration. By securitizing Central Asian migration while simultaneously promoting labor cooperation with India and the broader Global South, Moscow is attempting to position itself as a sovereign civilizational power operating in the emerging multipolar order.
[i] “Russia’s Crackdown Forces Central Asia to Rethink Labour Migration”, The Times of Central Asia, https://timesca.com/russias-crackdown-forces-central-asia-to-rethink-labor-migration/, (Date of Access: 17.08.2026).
[ii] “Russia Migration Rules Tighten as Central Asian Work Entries Fall”, The Times of Central Asia, https://timesca.com/central-asian-migrants-in-russia-tougher-rules/, (Date of Access: 17.08.2026).
[iii] “The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation”, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/fundamental_documents/1860586/, (Date of Access: 17.08.2026).
[iv] “Russia, facing labour crunch worsened by war, pivots to India for workers”, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/russia-facing-labour-crunch-worsened-by-war-pivots-india-workers-2026-02-11/?utm_source=chatgpt.com, (Date of Access: 17.08.2026).
