Having Ramped Up Anti-Immigrant Passions, Kremlin Appears to have Decided It Must Reverse Course, Persyev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 30 – After the Crocus City Hall incident and in an effort to distract attention from problems arising from Putin’s war in Ukraine, the Kremlin decided to ramp up anti-immigrant passions in the population, a campaign that has worked exceedingly well and led to various governmental moves against them.
    But as the war drags on and labor shortages intensify, Meduza observer Andrey Pertsev says, the very same people appear to have concluded “they may have gone too far” and as a result, they’re  “backpedaling … and attempting to reshape public attitudes” in the opposite direction (meduza.io/feature/2024/11/29/rossiyskie-vlasti-posle-terakta-v-krokuse-sdelaem-zhizn-migrantov-nevynosimoy-administratsiya-prezidenta-seychas-kazhetsya-my-proschitalis).
    Certain sectors in cities like taxis have been hit particularly hard by restrictions on immigrants, but rural Russia has been hit across the board because so many of its men, taking advantage of bonuses, have gone to fight in Ukraine and either not returned or returned with injuries that prevent them from working.
    These problems have been compounded by combat losses more generally in the Russian army and by Moscow’s need to dispatch more Russians to impose control on portions of Ukraine that the Russian military has managed to force the Ukrainian authorities out of, Pertsev continues.
    He says that t his has forced the Kremlin to conclude that its anti-immigrant campaign has entailed far more significant costs than it had expected and that “scaling back anti-immigration initiatives and softening the rhetoric would be prudent.” Some officials have backed off, but others are continuing to push a hard anti-immigrant line.
    Pertsev suggests that one of the clearest signs that the Kremlin will soon change direction and issue the kind of statements Russian officials and propagandists won’t ignore is the statement of Kremlin ally Duma deputy Olet Matveychev, who has declared that criticism of immigrants is a Western plot designed to “tear apart the Russian people from within.”
    But whether the Kremlin will find it as easy to turn off the anti-immigrant effort as it was to launch it very much remains an open question, the commentator suggests.