Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 8 arrived in Tajikistan for a state visit and a raft of meetings with leaders of other former Soviet states.

The three-day trip will include a Russia-Central Asia summit on October 9 involving Putin, who turned 73 on October 7, and the leaders of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. On October 10, the Russian and Central Asian presidents will be joined by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus for a broader meeting of countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Tajikistan is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine. But like ICC member Mongolia, which received Putin for a visit in September 2024, Tajikistan, a country that hosts a Russian military base with a mission to help secure the border with Afghanistan, will certainly not act on the warrant given its strategic and economic ties with Moscow.

Human Rights Watch on October 8 called on Tajikistan to arrest Putin. It said a failure to do so would show “utter disregard for the suffering of victims of Russian forces’ crimes in Ukraine.”

On arrival in Tajik capital Dushanbe, Putin was greeted by Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon, who turned 73 two days before Putin. Rahmon has been in power for nearly 33 years and is the longest serving of all the ex-Soviet leaders in power.

Earlier on October 8, Russia's Defence Ministry said Defence Minister Andrei Belousov held talks on military cooperation with his Tajik opposite number Emomali Sobirzoda.

"A lot today depends on cooperation between our two military institutions, most importantly, stability in Central Asia," the ministry quoted Belousov as saying. "The current situation remains very difficult."

Distracted by the war with Ukraine, Russia has lost economic ground in Central Asia to China and other powers and has struggled to keep up the level of political influence it has enjoyed in the region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

To Tajikistan, Russia is an essential source of remittances from work migrants. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told media on October 8 that Tajik citizens working in Russia transferred more than $1.8bn to their homeland in 2024, a figure that represents 17% of Tajikistan's GDP.

There is, though, much concern across Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan—the three Central Asian countries that account for most of the migrant workforce in Russia—about an ongoing tough crackdown on migrants in Russia, which is widely seen as xenophobic. 

"Although the countries of the [Central Asian] region have benefitted economically from the war in Ukraine, sharply increasing their exports to Russia, tensions between the two sides have nevertheless increased recently. These tensions are linked to the worsening situation of labour migrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Russia," Alisher Ilkhamov, founder of the UK-based research centre Central Asia Due Diligence, was quoted as saying by Azattyk.

The stagnation of the Russian economy looks set to pose a threat to the volume of remittances migrant workers can send to home countries in Central Asia. 

That would make the crackdown on migrants by Russian authorities even harder to bear.

"Migrants have become one of the vulnerable groups on which the Russian state is practicing its methods of social control," Temur Umarov, a researcher at the Carnegie Berlin Center, told Azattyk, adding: "These practices can then be scaled up to cover the rest of the population.

“Furthermore, a strict migration policy allows certain political forces within Russia to score points—it's used to consolidate society, create an 'enemy', and strengthen national identity. This is the inherent contradiction: migration policy undermines Russia's strategic interests in the region, yet it is being implemented by agencies unaffiliated with the foreign policy bloc."

Umarov did not rule out the chance that one of the Central Asian leaders gathered in Dushanbe might cautiously express dissatisfaction with Russia's migration policy, but added that he believed no harsh statements should be expected.

New Ukrainian postage stamp bearing a picture of scientist and Tajik native Bezhan Sharofov, who was killed while fighting against the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Credit: Ukrposhta, social media). 

Likely with an eye on Putin’s visit to Tajikistan, Ukraine on October 7 announced a postage stamp with a likeness of scientist Bezhan Sharofov, a biophysicist and native of Tajikistan, who was killed in April 2022 while defending Ukraine against the Russian invasion that started two months previously.

On October 8, AlJazeera reported on a prison interview with a Tajik work migrant from Dushanbe who was captured by Ukrainian troops as he fought for Russia. The prisoner of war, named only as Mohammed, claimed to have been roughly treated, forced into the Russian Army and fooled into military service that meant fighting on the frontline.

“Seeing Ukrainian servicemen’s normal attitude towards him, and comparing it with the Russians’ attitude, Mohammed expressed a wish to serve for the Ukrainian forces, so that he doesn’t return to Russia to experience racial and ethnic discrimination,” a Ukrainian officer was quoted as saying.