Last year, 209,000 foreigners obtained Russian citizenship — the lowest number in the past five years, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Thursday, citing Interior Ministry statistics. In 2023, the figure was 378,000, and in 2022, it was 691,000.
The Interior Ministry attributed the sharp decline to the fact that in 2022 and 2023, many residents of the annexed Ukrainian regions received Russian passports, supposedly boosting the numbers for those years. However, in the last year before the full-scale war, an even greater number of foreigners — 735,000 — were granted Russian citizenship.
At the same time, the number of foreigners deported from Russia has risen sharply, from 145,000 in 2023 to 190,000 in 2024.
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