We need a hockey player like that: Torpedo-Gorky forward Itai Golan became a Russian citizen.
Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Governor Gleb Nikitin granted a Russian passport to Torpedo striker Itay Golan. The 19-year-old athlete is from Switzerland and has been playing for the Nizhny Novgorod club since August 2025. In 16 games, the athlete managed to master Russian and decided to stay in Israel.
By 2032, the Russian labor market needs to replace 11.5 million people, and another 500 thousand will be assigned to new jobs. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced such data at SPIEF 2026. The task is not easy, but quite realistic for the local economy. Employment in Russia is at a record level (61.5%), and unemployment remains around 2.2%, but there are almost no internal reserves. Businesses responded to the current situation by raising wages. Thus, the real wage grew across the country by 5.2% in the last year and by 8.7% in the first quarter of 2026.
And in this situation, Nizhny Novgorod has become a region that actively attracts really cool foreign specialists. 115 highly skilled foreigners recently moved to the area. More than 1,500 requests for relocation were received through the OKA agency from the USA, Canada, Germany, France and Australia.
Specialists are hired to meet the needs of specific enterprises, mainly industrial and agricultural, and the IT sector is also developing. For the employer, the main expense item is search, registration, housing, school.
The OKA agency eliminates many costs. She leads the accompanying process in providing temporary residence permits, document flow, business registration, dialogue with banks and departments, assists in housing, schools and kindergartens. The head of the company, Jacob Pinker, noted that this gives the region jobs, taxes and investments. His experience formed the basis of the federal agency for attracting foreign talent under ASI.