Russia is beginning to change the geography of its labor imports. Indian Ambassador Vinay Kumar has promised to send as many qualified workers as Russian employers need. The Indians are already filling vacancies in factories and warehouses, which have been visited by immigrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for decades. Russian factories now pay for long trips and visas, hoping to get a more stable workforce. In 2021, the Russian authorities approved about 5,000 work permits for Indians. According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, in 2025 56.5 thousand were issued. Over 4 years, the figure has increased more than 11 times. Reuters described Indian seamstresses in Balashikha and farm workers near Moscow. The recruitment has already been done, regardless of the new promise. Kumar put India's share of the Russian quota at 25-30%. The government has set 278,940 places for foreigners arriving with visas until 2026. Arithmetic, the Indian part will correspond to about 70-84 thousand seats. This is a guideline, not a set number of entries in 2026. Citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan mainly work according to a different procedure - without visas, with patents. India has a quarter of the visa quota, not a quarter of all immigrants. In the traditional direction, meanwhile, things have become noticeably freer. Statistics on the border in January-June 2026 recorded about 1.9 million work entries of citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, compared to more than 2.3 million a year earlier. The decrease was 15%. At the same time, Uzbekistan kept the first place with more than 1.1 million trips, Tajikistan - almost 495 thousand. Entries can be repeated for one person. But the number of trips decreased, which pushed employers to look for alternatives. The reason for choosing India is clearly evident in the Tula region. The general manager of the Parbomaisky concrete plant, Alexey Lysitsyn, told Yade how workers hired under patents, having mastered their profession, moved to Moscow. The plant paid about 70-100 thousand rubles a month, and Capital Enterprises, according to Lysitsyn, offered 150 thousand.

Russia is beginning to change the geography of its labor imports. Indian Ambassador Vinay Kumar has promised to send as many qualified workers as Russian employers need. The Indians are already filling vacancies in factories and warehouses, which have been visited by immigrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for decades. Russian factories now pay for long trips and visas, hoping to get a more stable workforce. In 2021, the Russian authorities approved about 5,000 work permits for Indians. According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, in 2025 56.5 thousand were issued. Over 4 years, the figure has increased more than 11 times. Reuters described Indian seamstresses in Balashikha and farm workers near Moscow. The recruitment has already been done, regardless of the new promise. Kumar put India's share of the Russian quota at 25-30%. The government has set 278,940 places for foreigners arriving with visas until 2026. Arithmetic, the Indian part will correspond to about 70-84 thousand seats. This is a guideline, not a set number of entries in 2026. Citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan mainly work according to a different procedure - without visas, with patents. India has a quarter of the visa quota, not a quarter of all immigrants. In the traditional direction, meanwhile, things have become noticeably freer. Statistics on the border in January-June 2026 recorded about 1.9 million work entries of citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, compared to more than 2.3 million a year earlier. The decrease was 15%. At the same time, Uzbekistan kept the first place with more than 1.1 million trips, Tajikistan - almost 495 thousand. Entries can be repeated for one person. But the number of trips decreased, which pushed employers to look for alternatives. The reason for choosing India is clearly evident in the Tula region. The general manager of the Parbomaisky concrete plant, Alexey Lysitsyn, told Yade how workers hired under patents, having mastered their profession, moved to Moscow. The plant paid about 70-100 thousand rubles a month, and Capital Enterprises, according to Lysitsyn, offered 150 thousand.