Weeks after returning from Russia amid sanctions triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Emomali Safarov has swapped construction tools for a video camera and his old low-paid journalism job in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe.
He has not yet planned his next steps, but, for the moment, 24-year-old Safarov’s feelings are those of relief as the Tajik national reflects on his hasty exit from Russia, just two days after the war with Ukraine began on February 24.
“I was speaking to migrants who have been working in Russia for 30 years. They told me that it is impossible to compare today’s Russia with the Russia of old. The situation is very bad. Work has become very difficult,” Safarov said as he filmed paralympic athletes in Dushanbe for a news outlet.
Hundreds of thousands of nationals of former Soviet countries in Central Asia are facing similar choices: shrinking work opportunities in Russia and wages in the weakened ruble versus a return to the homeland where they have family homes, but even fewer job prospects.
Russia’s continuous economic growth during President Vladimir Putin’s first two terms in office, powered by rising energy prices, set the stage for a swell of migration from countries like Tajikistan, where remittances typically equate to between a quarter and two-fifths of GDP.
But successive economic setbacks, most notably the double whammy of Western sanctions over the Kremlin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the oil price crash, have led to tighter margins for guest workers feeding families back home.
Since Russian forces poured into Ukraine the ruble has fallen by around a fifth, with Western forecasters predicting an economic contraction of between five and 10 percent this year and a continuing recession in 2023.
The World Bank in March forecasted that the real value of remittances sent to Tajikistan would fall by 22 percent this year, scrapping its pre-invasion forecast of a two percent rise.
For Safarov, the bleak economic outlook in Russia was compounded by police raids on his and other migrants’ places of residence, which he said grew in frequency in the build-up to the invasion.
We have over 100,000 unemployed here (in Kyrgyzstan). If (migrants) return, where will they work, how will they feed their families? This is a big worry,” Sydykova said.
Source: eNCA
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