Russia to hire Indian workforce in machinery, electronics industries, says envoy

The envoy also underlined the growing workload of consular services as more Indians arrive for employment.

India’s envoy to Russia Vinay Kumar told news agency TASS in an interview that Russian companies in the machinery and electronics sectors are showing growing interest in employing Indian citizens.

"At a broader level, there is manpower requirement in Russia and India has a skilled manpower. So at present, within the Russian regulations, framework of Russian regulations, laws and quotas, the companies are hiring Indians," Kumar said to TASS.

He noted that "most of the people who have come are in construction and textile sector" but added that demand in machinery and electronics industries is rising.

The envoy also underlined the growing workload of consular services as more Indians arrive for employment. "When people come and leave, they need consular services to extend passport, childbirth, say for example, and loss of passport and those kinds, basically consular services," he told TASS.

Meanwhile, Russia will import up to 1 million workforce by the end of this year to address labour shortage in the country's highly industrialised areas, a business leader said last month

"As far as I know, by the end of the year, 1 million specialists from India will come to Russia, including the Sverdlovsk region. A new Consulate General is opening in Yekaterinburg, which will deal with these issues," Andrey Besedin, the head of the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the RosBusinessConsulting (RBC) news agency, as quoted by news agency PTI.

Besedin said the migration of Indians would fill the shortage of a highly qualified workforce in the Sverdlovsk region. Sverdlovsk, with the capital Yekaterinburg, is situated in the Ural mountains and is home to Russian heavy industry and military-industrial complex, including world-famous Uralmash and T-90 series tank maker Ural Wagon Zavod.

Besedin stressed that industrial enterprises needed to increase production volumes, but the region faced a shortage of skilled workers. Some workers are deployed in the military operation in Ukraine, and young people do not go to factories, Besedin said.

He said Russia was also considering inviting labourers from Sri Lanka and North Korea, but it was a rather complex issue. Migrant workers from India began to arrive at enterprises in Russian regions in 2024.

They were in particular invited by the Kaliningrad fish processing complex "Za Rodinu" against the backdrop of a labour shortage. According to the RBC news agency, the Russian Ministry of Labour predicted a workforce shortage of 3.1 million people by 2030. It proposed an increase in the quota for inviting qualified foreign workers in 2025 by 1.5 times to 0.23 million people.

*With Agency Inputs