New proposal against migrants put forward in Russia

The LDPR party leader, Leonid Slutsky, has proposed abolishing social pensions for migrants in Russia to ease the burden on the federal budget. He shared this proposal in an interview with Gazeta.ru.

’’Russia is currently experiencing a very critical situation. Military, social, demographic, and other issues all require enormous resources. Every penny counts!’’ he emphasized.

According to Slutsky, the state is spending money on pensions for migrants ’’who have contributed nothing to the building of the Russian nation,’’ while Russian pensioners themselves struggle to make ends meet. 

He noted that LDPR considers it necessary to abolish ’’free social benefits’’ for newly arrived migrants.

Slutsky added that net migration in 2024 reached around 600,000 people, the highest figure in the past 30 years.

The LDPR’s explanatory note to the proposal states that the measure aims to protect the pension system from unjustified social obligations and to reduce the burden on the state budget.

In 2024, pensions in Russia were indexed by 7.5 percent, and in 2025 by 14.75 percent, bringing the average pension to 15,456 rubles.

Under the law, the right to receive a pension is granted, among others, to foreign nationals and stateless persons who have permanently resided in Russia for at least 15 years and have reached the ages of 70 for men and 65 for women.

As of September 1, 2024, there were 6,174,777 foreign nationals residing in Russia, according to the state migration registration system.

It is worth noting that earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed considering the abolition of the patent system currently in place for labor migrants.