Russia in 2024 expelled more than 80,000 migrants for immigration rule violations, compared to 44,200 in 2023 and 26,600 in 2022, TASS reported on January 8.

The Russian state news agency cited a source as saying court orders were used to deport the foreign citizens and stateless persons.

No information on the nationalities of those deported last year was given. However, Russian media lately reported that 18,000 migrants were deported from Moscow in 2024, with most of those targeted nationals of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Russia stepped up deportations and the tightening of immigration regulation amid a xenophobic backlash in the country against Central Asian migrants that followed the March terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in outer Moscow that took the lives of at least 140 people. Four Tajik work migrants, accused of being the gunmen who carried out the Islamist atrocity, remain in pre-trial detention. In late December, Russian authorities detained a 29-year-old Uzbek national suspected of organising the scooter-bomb assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian military’s chemical and biological defence forces. The detention added to anti-Central Asian migrant feelings in Russia, which is expelling an increasing number of migrant workers from Central Asia despite difficulties with labour shortages.

In the past year, more than 10 Russian regions have banned the awarding of various jobs to migrants.

Tajikistan’s Asia-Plus has published material attempting to explain in detail new rules in Russia that apply to migrant workers.