Around 3,000 migrants were detained in St. Petersburg on New Year’s eve as part of a series of mass detentions across Russia, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reported on January 2 citing local media.
The Fontanka news outlet said more than 100 of those arrested in St. Petersburg are going to be deported. The SOTA news website reported similar mass detentions in Moscow, though it said the number of migrants held was not known.
Russian officials have reportedly used such raids on migrants in recent months to find those with Russian citizenship. Those people are then forced into military service.
Hundreds of thousands of labor migrants from the Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan currently work in Russia.
