Foreign nationals are moving to Russia despite COVID-ban

Long waits for visas, double quarantines and rare meetings with family: what foreign specialists who work in Moscow experience in the new epidemiological reality.

Despite the closed borders and restrictions on movement linked to the coronavirus pandemic, foreign specialists still come to work in Russia and their number has even increased.

According to reliable information from the institution, which helps expats in Russia, at the beginning of 2021, around 21,000 work permits for highly qualified specialists were issued, after comparing with 7,000 permits after a similar moment in 2020. In the first faithful of the “pre-pandemic” 2019 year, 16,000 permits were issued, so that their number has already increased. Intermark explains this phenomenon with “unrealized” 2020 permissions, made exclusively now.

The side of the emergence of these specialists, however, has not changed for a long time now: in the first place is France, then Italy, Germany, Japan, Norway, the USA, and Great Britain. It is interesting that expats immediately move not only to huge cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, but also to small regional cities where factories, or branches, are located. First of all, expats are invited to work in Russia by international FMCG and IT companies.