Immigration to Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Immigration to Russia changed in February 2024, when the government dropped a long-standing requirement that newcomers show conversational ability in Russian. The waiver was meant to speed up a decades-old effort, a law called the Program for the return of compatriots to Russia. It defines compatriots as direct descendants, through either parent's line, of anyone who once lived within Russia's current borders. It sounds like a narrow bureaucratic fix, but it opens onto a much larger question. How does a state built on returning its own diaspora end up hosting immigrants from dozens of countries with no Russian ancestry at all? And once they arrive, what determines whether they can ever call the country home?

• 2. Imperial Roots

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  Peter I ruled Russia from 1682 to 1725, and his reign opened the door to large numbers of foreign settlers. Catherine II took the throne in 1762 and pushed that policy even further, turning the empire into one of the world's leading destinations for immigrants. Officials set aside entire regions for newcomers, among them Novorossiya, Slavo-Serbia, the Volga territories and Bessarabia. That era of open settlement ended abruptly with the October Revolution in 1917.

  Immigration nearly stopped during the Soviet period, which ran from 1922 to 1991. It stayed just as low through the early post-Soviet years, from 1992 to 2005. That long closed era set the stage for a very different kind of immigration policy in the twenty-first century.

• 3. Reversing A Decline

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  In 2006, the Russian government introduced a program to draw its diaspora back to the country. The measure targeted a demographic slide that had been building for years. A falling birthrate, shrinking life expectancy and rising emigration all pulled the population down. Lawmakers made the program permanent in 2012, and Russia's population has grown steadily every year since.

  That reversal would soon raise a pointed question about who exactly was answering the call.

• 4. Who Comes And Why

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  Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan supply most of Russia's recent immigrants, and all six were once Soviet republics. The Russian government actively encourages ethnic Russians to immigrate, yet most arriving from these republics in recent years have not been ethnic Russians at all.

  By 2018, Ukrainians made up the largest immigrant group outside Central Asia, numbering more than 2 million people. In 2024, Rosstat counted 8.5 million refugees from Ukraine living in Russia.

  Legal immigrants can also receive grant money, plus repayable, low-interest loans issued by Rossotrudnichestvo, once they are in the country. Getting that support still means working through a formal legal process that can take years to complete.

• 5. The Path To Citizenship

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  The standard route to Russian citizenship runs through three stages: a temporary residence permit, then a permanent residence permit, then citizenship itself. After five years of residence, applicants can apply for citizenship if they pass an exam in Russian language, civics and history. The Main Directorate for Migration Affairs, part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, oversees the entire process.

  Anyone employed in Russia for five years who becomes fluent in Russian can become a citizen, provided they have not committed a crime. Almost anyone hired by a Russian company can stay and work in the country indefinitely. That openness reflects a shift, under Vladimir Putin's government, away from the more restrictive rules Russia adopted after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

  The non-Slavic immigrants who arrived under that looser policy have sometimes faced xenophobia. In response, Russian authorities have used the country's hate-speech laws to shut down anti-immigrant groups, including the Movement Against Illegal Immigration.

  Applicants first need a documented connection to Russia, through a job, studies, Russian relatives or ancestry, an investment or a property purchase. Most then apply for temporary residency, though some are allowed to skip that step. A year of temporary residency opens the door to permanent residency, and five years of permanent residency opens the door to citizenship.

  Native Russian speakers, spouses of Russian citizens, highly qualified specialists such as PhD or MD holders, investors and refugees qualify for a simplified procedure. Some of them can skip temporary residency altogether and apply for citizenship after just one to three years in the country. All of this paperwork adds up to numbers that put Russia among the largest migration systems in the world.

• 6. Counting The Newcomers

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  In 2020, Russia ranked fourth in the world for the number of immigrants it hosted, behind only the United States, Germany and Saudi Arabia. The same year, it ranked third worldwide for the number of people it sent abroad, trailing only India and Mexico.

  Between 2000 and 2015, the number of legal immigrants in Russia fluctuated between 11 and 12 million people, according to Rosstat and the United Nations. That figure amounted to roughly 8% of the population.

  Russia's total gross immigration, tallied by year, ran to 359,330 people in 2000 and reached 958,867 by 2024. Net immigration followed a rockier path. It started at 213,610 in 2000, climbed above 400,000 in some years, sank to just 61,917 in 2022, then rebounded to 535,715 by 2024.

  Those totals track people crossing the border each year. A different count, the number of foreigners living in Russia at any one time, tells its own story.

• 7. Foreign Population Swings

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  As of May 2022, 5.99 million foreigners lived in Russia, up from 5.66 million in 2021 but down from 10.13 million in 2019. Ninety-one percent of them held citizenship in CIS countries. Central Asians formed the largest group, followed by Ukrainian citizens.

  Temporary migration from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan increased again after a marked decline in 2020-2021. Other CIS countries, by contrast, kept seeing their migrant numbers fall.

  By November 2021, the Ministry of Internal Affairs counted 5.5 million migrants in the country, of whom 819,600 were there illegally. In the first quarter of 2021, Russia deported 1,345 migrants, more than in the same period the year before. Deportations in Russia were on the rise.

  Between January 2025 and January 2026, amid new migration legislation, Russia's foreign population fell by 10%. By 2026, that population stood at 5.7 million, down from 6.3 million the year before.

  Falling as it has, that population still produces its own steady count of people who cross from resident to citizen each year.

• 8. Naturalization Numbers

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  In 2021, Russia granted citizenship to 735,385 people, a total that included 6,118 stateless persons. Two years earlier, in 2019, the country's registered foreign resident population had reached 1,046,056, among them 8,157 people with no citizenship anywhere.

  Even among millions of foreign residents, Russia's own statistics still count each of those 8,157 stateless people individually, one line at a time.