Since the terrorist attack in March at the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow, the Russian authorities have come up with multiple initiatives restricting the rights of migrants. The latest: this month, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced the introduction of a bill that would prohibit the enrollment of migrants’ children in schools if their Russian language skills do not meet a certain standard. “When enrolling migrants’ children in schools, we are proposing a check of the legality of their stay in Russia, mandatory testing of their Russian language proficiency and a ban on their enrollment in public educational institutions without proof of their knowledge of the Russian language,” Volodin said.

The children’s rights commissioner for Sverdlovsk Region, Igor Morokov, stated in an interview with a regional television channel that migrants’ children with poor Russian language skills should be equated, in terms of educational conditions, with “children with special needs [and] children with disabilities.”

In another anti-migrant initiative, starting January 1, 2025, migrants will be banned from working as couriers in Saratov Region, adding to a growing list of prohibited jobs. They are already barred from the passenger transportation and food retail sectors in multiple regions. These industries, according to Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin in the official Parlamentskaya Gazeta, have the highest concentration of migrant workers.

Following this, the pro-Kremlin and far-right Tsargrad TV published a story titled, “No One Notices Them, but We Should: Migrant Couriers Are a Real Threat to Russia’s National Security.” In this piece, FSB Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Popov claimed that migrants could be tools of Western intelligence agencies since they come from countries where Ukraine has diplomatic missions.

“Couriers could act as surveillance operatives. They can follow you in the war or on the street… and you would never suspect it,” Popov said. “There are no limits for couriers – government agencies, civil servants, law enforcement and even the security services order deliveries.”

In October, the Duma passed a bill making undocumented status an aggravating circumstance in crimes committed by undocumented migrants and elevated organizing illegal migration to a “particularly serious” offense, punishable by imprisonment.

Despite these measures, official statistics show migrants commit a small percentage of crimes in Russia. In 2022, foreign nationals and stateless individuals accounted for only 2.04% of all registered crimes, Marina Khramova, director of the Institute for Demographic Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Russian media outlet RBC.

“But another important aspect is whom these crimes are against. The majority of them are against other migrants,” Khramova explained. “These crimes often remain within migrant communities and usually have to do with everyday life – sometimes rooted in religion or, for instance, simply fights at markets.”

Anti-migrant sentiment in society is rising alongside the tightening of government policy. In a column for the news site Gazeta.ru, journalist Anastasia Mironova argued that migrants bring “not just a different culture, but a lower one.” She claimed this is particularly evident in their attitudes toward women.

“The Soviet government once fought for Eastern women’s rights, but now they have been abandoned,” Mironova wrote. “A Russian man who beats his wife does it secretly at home, knowing it’s wrong. But an Asian boy might openly kick a girl at school, believing it’s his absolute right to hit any woman. The only regulator is the risk of revenge from her family.”

Mironova also highlighted incidents involving migrant children attacking classmates. In one case that she mentions, a 15-year-old boy from the Urals “jumped and kicked a Russian girl,” allegedly to get “likes” on social media, according to the pro-Kremlin newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. The boy’s father, the outlet noted, is from Azerbaijan.

Media beyond the Kremlin’s control have reported instances of migrants being victimized. In Siberia, an eight-year-old boy from the only migrant family in a Novosibirsk Region village was repeatedly beaten by classmates, according to the BBC Russian service. When the boy’s parents came to the school, they caught one of the bullies and brought him to a teacher. The bully’s family responded by filing a police complaint, leading to the father’s arrest on charges of kidnapping.

The local community, however, rallied in support of the migrant family. They addressed a local MP in a video.

“They have done nothing wrong. They are good neighbors and people” a local resident said in the video. “We do not care what nationality someone is. We are all brothers and sisters. I am white, he is darker – what difference does it make? We live in the same village and must respect each other.”

Ultimately, prosecutors dropped the charges against the migrant family.

Authorities are also targeting migrant cultural groups. In May, the Ministry of Justice dissolved an Uzbek community organization in Volgograd, citing foreign funding and a failure to report it. Commenting on the case, Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy engaged in victim-blaming.

“They lack electricity and water – that’s the price of their independence. But if they gained independence by kicking [ethnic] Russians out of their republics, then c’mon, when they come to Russia, they should shave their beards, stop wearing niqabs and follow our laws,” Tolstoy is quoted as saying by the Volgograd news outlet V1.ru.

Also in October, Vladimir Region became the first in Russia to ban niqabs and hijabs in schools.

“Church is separate from state, including secular education. Student clothing must not display religious symbols,” the Ministry of Education remarked, as reported by the Vedomosti newspaper.

While freedom of religion is guaranteed in Russia’s Constitution, the ministry sees nothing wrong about restricting expressions of belonging to the Islamic faith. It
emphasized that the new rules “fully comply with the law on freedom of conscience and religious associations and the law on education.”

Meanwhile, the government continues to pressure migrants to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine. In a report in October, the exiled media outlet Current Timetalked to a Tajik convict in Russia, who revealed how migrant inmates are coerced into enlisting and renouncing their citizenship.

“People do not know what to do. They say, ‘we will take our own lives, but we will not give up our citizenship or go to war,’” he told Current Time. “They believe it’s better to die than betray their homeland and go to war.”

A group of migrants in Russian jail claimed they were threatened with forced deployment to the front line: “they suggest going there [to Ukraine] voluntarily. In this case, you will get better conditions. But if they make you, you will go straight to the front line, where there’s no chance of survival.”