Russia is increasingly actively attracting workers from India to compensate for the acute shortage of labor, estimated by the authorities at at least 2.3 million people, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the decreasing influx of labor migrants from Central Asia, reports "Reuters".
Indian citizens with work visas are increasingly arriving at Moscow airports after traveling more than 4,000 km and often traveling in transit through Uzbekistan. Some of them are on one-year contracts in the fields of garbage collection, construction, services or manufacturing.
According to Russian authorities, in 2021, a year before the start of the full-scale war, about 5,000 work permits were approved for Indian citizens. Last year, that number rose to nearly 72,000 - almost a third of the total annual quota for labor migrants who require visas.
Business representatives say that workers from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia - which do not require visas - are no longer arriving in sufficient numbers. Although they continue to make up the bulk of the estimated 2.3 million legally resident foreign workers without visas, the depreciation of the ruble, tighter migration laws and increased anti-immigrant rhetoric have limited their inflow.
The choice of India as a new source of low-skilled labor also reflects the deepening economic and defense ties between Moscow and New Delhi. India has been buying Russian oil at a discount since Western sanctions, and in December President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed an agreement to facilitate labor mobility between the two countries. At the time, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said the country could accept “an unlimited number” of Indian workers.
According to official estimates, Russia needs at least 800,000 people in manufacturing and about 1.5 million more in services and construction.
Indians already work in textile factories near Moscow, as well as on farms where they process and pack vegetables for an average salary of about 50,000 rubles (about $660) a month - a wage that employers say locals are reluctant to work for.
It is unclear whether any U.S. pressure on India to limit purchases of Russian oil will have an impact on labor migration. So far, Moscow has played down such concerns, and the influx of Indian workers continues.