Putin’s Wednesday appeal, published in full on the Kremlin’s website, came less than a week after the terrorist attack in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, whose perpetrators and facilitators are, according to Russian investigators, immigrants from Tajikistan and other Central Asian states.
Footage of the four accused leaving the court with numerous traces of police violence and torture – one arrived unable to walk in a wheelchair and with a urine bag, the other with a cut off piece of his ear – further encouraged the “hunt for immigrants” in Russian society (and probably in the military as well). .
“You know, when I hear our ‘hurrah patriots’ – and there are such people in every society – how they say that Russia is only for Russians, I begin to feel anxious. Why? Because if we take into account that 190 ethnic groups live in our country and some nationalities are represented by millions of peoples, then as soon as we start implementing these destructive thoughts that everyone else is a stranger, we will break the country. And the Russian nation will be the main sufferer,” Putin said in front of Russian airmen on Wednesday.
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“Therefore, it is necessary to approach it as an adult, not to wave your hands and not let your mouth run wild, but to think about every word, every sentence,” he continued.
Soldiers from ethnically non-Russian regions are fighting in Ukraine
“Representatives of all religions, all Russian nations are showing themselves on the battlefield today from a better side,” Putin further declared, primarily reacting to the fact that Russian armed aggression in Ukraine involves a large number of soldiers from ethnically “non-Russian” regions of the Russian Federation.
According to a Thursday report by the Kommersant newspaper, in recent days, massive checks have been launched at workplaces employing migrants, construction managers are sending their employees to migration centers for additional checks and not allowing them to start work. A number of Russian employers have openly announced that they will give priority to local residents when hiring new employees, Sergey Kostyuchenkov, chairman of the housing and municipal economy committee of the Tula Chamber of Commerce, told Kommersant.
Migrants, mainly from Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, represent a significant labor force in Russia, representing about ten percent of the labor market (about seven million immigrants work in Russia both legally and illegally). “For the past twenty years, Russia has been trying to attract unskilled migrants to the country, today they represent a significant part of our economy,” confirmed Alexey Zakharov, head of the Russian company Superjobs.
According to Vjačeslav Potanin, director of the Center for Analytical and Practical Research on Migration Processes, their services cannot be refused, otherwise “the housing and municipal economy, agriculture, transport and other sectors of the economy will fall apart”.
In addition to the economy, migrants are also a valuable source of manpower for the Russian military. It is immigrants that Moscow sends to the Ukrainian front to a large extent, offering some of them Russian citizenship and other concessions for their participation.
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