Putin Might Soon Clinch A Large-Scale Labor Migration Deal With Modi

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Putin will visit India late next week to meet with Modi for their annual summit, the first time that the Russian leader will travel to India since the special operation began, his last one being in December 2021.

Aleksei Zakharov, a Fellow at India’s esteemed Observer Research Foundation, published a detailed article about how “Key Policy Outcomes Expected at the India-Russia Summit”.

It’s an excellent read, but it omits mention of their large-scale labor migration talks, which might lead to a deal next week.

Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired), the former Director-General of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, published an intriguing piece about this at RT in early November.

He noted how both countries representatives “discussed potential collaboration on social and labor issues”, contextualizing their conversation by adding that Russia “plans to recruit up to 1 million foreign workers – including from India. The Russian Labor Ministry estimates the shortfall could expand to 3.1 million workers by 2030.”

He makes a lot of compelling arguments about how India could help resolve this dimension of “Russia’s demography problem”, but what’s left out is how its labor migrants pose less of a security risk than Russia’s traditional ones from Central Asia. Conor Gallagher touched upon this in early November in his extensively detailed analysis about the US’ evolving strategy towards that region. From this point here near the end for the next several paragraphs, he describes Russia’s new approach towards migration.

Not only is Russia “getting rid of 700,000-plus migrants, mostly Central Asians, a process which was jumpstarted by the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in outer Moscow in March 2024”, but “the Concept of State Migration Policy for 2026-2030…focuses not on increasing the population through Central Asian citizens, but on strengthening control, digitalization, and the task of attracting only those migrants who share the ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ of Russian society.”

Putin spoke about the security threats posed by “the migration factor” in early November during a meeting with the Council on Interethnic Relations where they discussed ways to fine-tune the State Interethnic Policy, the updated version of which was then approved by month’s end. It’s not declared, but the innuendo is that Central Asian Muslims are at a greater risk of radicalism and being manipulated by foreign forces than other labor migrants such as Indians (both Muslims and especially Hindus).

It’s within this economic-security context that Russia is exploring a large-scale migrant labor deal with India that might be clinched during the Putin-Modi Summit. To be clear, recent policy changes won’t lead to Indians playing a role in “population replacement”, only in labor replacement since most likely won’t be offered a path to residency and then citizenship. The sole purpose is for Indians to meet Russia’s labor shortage in lieu of Central Asian Muslims in exchange for profitable remittance opportunities.

Indians are among the most Russian-friendly people in the world as proven by credible surveys, and unlike Central Asian Muslims, they harbor no historical grievances (whether objectively existing or subjectively perceived) that could be manipulated by foreign forces to weaponize them against Russia.

Their society is also proudly secular and this makes them much less likely to be radicalized into terrorists.

It therefore wouldn’t be surprising if Putin clinches a large-scale labor migration deal with Modi.