Central Asians leaving Russia over Ukraine war
After living and working in Russia for the last decade, Tajik construction worker Zoir Kurbanov recently decided it was time to head home.
Life for many Central Asian migrants in Russia after it invaded Ukraine was not the same: wages were falling and men faced a danger of being sent by Moscow to the front.
Then, Kurbanov got an offer for jobs on building sites in Mariupol and Donetsk — cities in occupied Ukraine.
“I refused,” the 39-year-old said. He decided to take a huge pay cut and return home to Tajikistan “because of the war,” taking up a construction job in the capital Dushanbe.
Russia is increasingly trying to lure Central Asian migrants to work in the parts of Ukraine it occupies, or even to sign up to fight for its army.
While some 1.3 million still migrated to Russia from Central Asia in the first quarter of 2023, some are choosing to leave, rather than be coerced to go to Ukraine.
Moscow is offering high salaries, social benefits and even promises of citizenship to work in places like Mariupol, virtually flattened by the Russian army last year.
Meanwhile, enlistment offices and recruitment campaigns are trying to entice them to join the Russian army.
While there are no exact numbers on how many migrant workers have left Russia — or the numbers sent to work in Ukraine or recruited to the army — Kurbanov’s case is not an exception.
If offers of bumper paychecks don’t work, Russian authorities have other means of coercing migrants to the front.
“The Russian police were checking me everywhere, asking if I had done my military service,” Argen Bolgonbekov, a 29-year-old who served in the Kygryz border force, said.
What starts as a document check can often escalate, he said. On the pretext of uncovering some kind of offense — real or fabricated — Russian authorities sometimes offer migrants a stark choice: prison or the army.