cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10153535
Russia will require migrants to buy mobile phones so authorities can track their whereabouts, Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov said, according to the Russian business news outlet RBC:
Everyone’s interested in what the future holds, in where we’re headed. Every migrant who registers here on arrival — especially for work or for a long stay — will be required to buy a phone. That phone will hold their electronic profile. And we will know the location of every migrant.
As a result, Zubov said, migrants will be unable to move from one city to another “uncontrollably.”
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Since September 2025, Moscow has been running a pilot program that requires every foreign national who has come to work in the city to install an app called “Amina,” which shows their location. If it receives no geolocation data for three straight days, the person is dropped from the registration rolls.
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It’s a popular place for people in many of the poorer former Soviet republics to work in since Russia had a larger economy and more opportunities for higher paying jobs than back in their home countries, knowledge of Russian is widespread with historical Soviet influence/continuing Russian influence, diasporas are already there as a support network since it used to be one country and it was not especially restrictive to go over and work.
That said Russia’s far right has been venomous about this since their Islamophobia doesn’t mix well with a bunch of Muslim people arriving from Central Asia. Groups like Russian Community have been attacking mosques, people who look foreign, stealing from them etc. and as the state is sort of scraping the barrel on bodies to send to Ukraine in some communities have far right militias actually partner with the police and work in their operations with the name of establishing “order”.
This law in the post and tightening of visas is red meat to those sorts of far-right factions in exchange for their continued support.