RUSSIA is increasingly hiring workers from India as it faces a labour shortage linked to demographic decline and the war in Ukraine.
Russian companies are recruiting Indian workers for jobs in construction, factories, sanitation, farming and road maintenance.
The number of work permits issued to Indian nationals in 2025 rose 56 per cent from the previous year to 56,534, according to analysis by Aleksei Zakharov, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi. The figure stood at 5,480 in 2021, before the Ukraine war began, reported The Telegraph.
In December, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi signed a labour mobility agreement that included a quota of nearly 72,000 worker visas for Indians in 2026. Recruiters operating between India and Russia have also expanded operations. Zakharov said: “They even organise Russian language courses and preliminary training for some workers who will go to Russia.”
Rajan Kumar, a Russia expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, told The Telegraph that migration numbers may be much higher than official figures. He said anecdotal evidence suggested migration from India to Russia across 2025 and 2026 could have totalled 250,000 people.
Mukesh Mandal, an Indian worker employed by a Russian road maintenance company in St Petersburg, told local outlet Fontanka in December: “I’m looking for temples but I can’t find any. I guess there are fewer Hindu temples in St Petersburg.”
Mandal is among 17 Indian workers employed in street-cleaning work in St Petersburg’s Primorsky District since last autumn. Their presence drew local attention, but such migration is becoming more common as Russia seeks workers from outside Central Asia.
Recruitment firms in India are advertising jobs in Russian factories, construction and food processing. A Mumbai-based company, Victoria International, advertises “complete assistance for working in Russia” and says its jobs come with “meals and good salary”.
Kumar said Russian companies are mainly hiring workers from rural India for low-paid jobs. “They are not educated, they do not have resources. For them the move is about the salary,” he said.
Russia’s labour shortage has worsened due to a falling birth rate, emigration and military losses linked to the Ukraine war. Salavat Abylkalikov, a Philipp Schwartz fellow at the University of Regensburg, said Russia recorded 16.8 million more deaths than births between 1992 and 2023.
Russia’s unemployment rate is now 2.2 per cent. The government is considering easing restrictions on teenage labour in industrial jobs and has doubled the annual overtime limit from 120 hours to 240 hours.
Abylkalikov said: “This problem could become catastrophic quite quickly.”
Kumar said Russia’s trade surplus with India has also helped support labour arrangements between the two countries. “Those rupees can be used for paying workers from India,” he said.
Despite rising migration from India, experts said the numbers remain too small to solve Russia’s wider labour shortage. Abylkalikov said: “Russia’s labour shortage is measured in millions of people. The Indian channel is still measured in tens of thousands and is bound up with quotas, high costs and problems of retaining workers.”
Many workers also do not plan to stay permanently. Mandal said: “My plan for the year is to stay in Russia, earn some money and then return to my country.”
