By Murad Rakhimov | 2026-07-14

Russia wants the world's brightest minds -- scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs -- to pack up and move to Moscow. There is one catch: its own experts are sprinting for the exits.

In April, the Kremlin launched a website inviting gifted foreigners to apply for a new life in the country, complete with a promised "green corridor." But the Russia they are asked to join is the same one hundreds of thousands of its own specialists have already fled. The conditions that drove them out have not changed.

The bet is simple: import talent to replace the talent that is leaving. Whether it works is another matter.

New faces, old problems

It started in early December 2025, when President Vladimir Putin signed a decree backing the relocation of foreigners who "represent an interest" to Russia. In mid-April 2026 came the platform itself -- "Vremya Zhit v Rossii," or "Time to Live in Russia" -- where foreigners can apply to live and work.

Scientists, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, gifted students and investors can register, along with major award winners and "sought-after specialists" holding specialized degrees and at least five years in priority sectors: manufacturing, mining, information technology, microelectronics and energy. The site also offers visa services, migration help and Russian lessons, plus glowing testimonials from six expats who moved from Italy, Germany, France, Vietnam and Tajikistan.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) run the program -- the same ASI that the daily Kommersant dismissed at its 2011 founding as a pointless body with a vague mandate, limited authority and redundant functions.

Now the agency argues Russia can win skilled labor from countries outside the Commonwealth of Independent States whose professionals "reject Western spiritual values." Director General Svetlana Chupsheva calls the service a "green corridor" and said it must give candidates "a straightforward application process, a transparent skills assessment, and comprehensive onboarding support once they arrive in Russia."

The main requirements, the agency said, are "sought-after competencies" and "respect for traditional Russian values." Applications take 95 to 125 days, and the project aims to draw 1,000 foreign families by 2030. Within nine days of launch, the ASI said, 1,800 people filled out questionnaires and 170 submitted full applications. Most are 40 to 45 years old. A third would bring a spouse, 30% would bring children, and most want Moscow (33.5%), followed by Saint Petersburg (14.5%) and the Moscow region (10.9%).

Millions of jobs unfilled

Here lies the contradiction. Western "talent visas" -- the US O-1, the UK Global Talent Visa, the French Passeport Talent -- last one to five years. Russia wants foreigners permanently. The term it uses, "impatriation," normally describes diaspora returning to an ancestral homeland; Russia applies it to foreigners with no Russian roots at all. Yet during the first year of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Western nations granted far more talent visas to Russians heading the other way. US approvals doubled. The UK's rose fivefold.

Russia's own talent, meanwhile, keeps going. After the fall 2022 mobilization, an estimated 500,000 to 1.3 million people left, and the flow has not stopped. By October 2024, the Central Bank reported a record labor shortage, with two-thirds of occupations short of workers. The gap has carried into 2026 at 1.5 million to 3.1 million workers, according to the specialized platform Ruki.ru.

The same muddle grips the low-wage market. Construction, transport and municipal services are starved for workers, yet the state keeps tightening migration rules, though migrants from post-Soviet states long filled those jobs.

"This is an absurd situation," political scientist Anvar Nazirov told Kontur. "They are expelling janitors and other labor migrants from Central Asian countries, only to bring people in from India. The Indians cannot work; naturally, they do not know the language and are completely unaccustomed to these conditions."

Entire fields of science and industry have all but disappeared and would need rebuilding before any newcomer could start. The forces driving Russians out -- restricted rights, political pressure, few paths to grow -- stay in place.

"People are leaving Russia because they cannot live and work under these conditions," Nazirov said. "Why does the Kremlin think others will suddenly start working under them?"

They'll come running back

Some see a darker calculation. Alisher Ilkhamov, director of the London-based Center for Central Asia Due Diligence, told Kontur that Putin refuses to end the war despite mounting losses and Ukraine's lead in combat drones, and has ordered the defense ministry and military-industrial complex to close the gap. To do so, the government will likely mobilize its own specialists to build and run drones -- work that grows deadlier as Ukraine hits manufacturing sites and command posts. That will hollow out the civilian economy, Ilkhamov said, which is exactly why the Kremlin now courts foreigners.

Dmitry Dubrovsky, a researcher at Charles University in Prague, expects Russia to lose more than it gains. Sanctions, boycotts and the risk that any city could be bombed make for terrible working conditions, he told Kontur. Top specialists want professional growth, not merely a paycheck, and isolation from the global scientific community will doom the effort. Some foreigners will still come, he allowed, especially those struggling abroad.

"The regime is currently willing to pay huge sums to replace the professionals who left," Dubrovsky said. "But after a fairly short time, these people will come running back, fully realizing that while you can make quick money here, this country has no future in a scientific sense."