Anti-Immigrant Campaign Began Earlier than Most Think and without Kremlin Direction They Assume, Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble
    
    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Moscow’s anti-immigrant campaign did not begin with Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine or after the Crocus City Hall attack but rather in 2020, and it began and has developed less as a Kremlin-controlled effort than as the result of various politicians trying to gain support, Aleksandr Verkhovsky says.

    Most commentators suggest the current anti-immigrant campaign began as an effort to distract Russians from the war in Ukraine or in response to the Crocus City Hall attack, the head of the SOVA Analytic Center says; but in fact, it began earlier and with less central direction (bereg.io/feature/2025/04/04/uroven-ksenofobii-v-rossii-vse-vyshe-mery-protiv-migrantov-bespretsedentno-zhestkie-eto-splanirovannaya-politika-vlastey).
    
    He says that the effort began in 2020 and that attempts to blame it on the war or the terrorist attack are efforts to suggest the campaign is both more rational and more centrally controlled than is in fact the case. It expanded after each of those events but it was not caused by them.
    
    Instead, the demonization of migrant workers was the result of efforts by populist politicians in the Duma and elsewhere to win support by playing to popular prejudices rather than a concerted Kremlin policy at least to begin with and has grown because of their activities rather than because of the actions of the Presidential Administration.

    There is a great deal of evidence for these conclusions, including poll results at various points and the statements of Duma politicians, Verkhovsky continues; but the clearest is the decision to ban immigrant children who don’t know Russian well from attending Russian schools.

    That action plays to populist feelings but it is completely at odds with other Kremlin policies which seek to continue to use immigrant workers and integrate them into Russian society. It is thus not a decision which one can imagine anyone in the Kremlin from Putin on down making.

    Verkhovsky’s comments are significant not only as an explanation of the rise of anti-immigrant propaganda but also as a sign of a more general trend in late Putinism, one in which the Kremlin doesn’t take the lead or make the decisions on all policies but allows others to do so while it focuses on a smaller set of things it cares most about.