Paul Goble Staunton, Mar. 31 – Aleksandr Grebenkin, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, says that in several regions, “closed migrant enclaves” are appearing, places “where Russian laws do not operate.” But he adds that provisions of the Kremlin’s new migration policy will eliminate this threat. “In a number of regions in urban and rural settlements are forming plases of compact resident of mono-ethnic groups, the formation of which as a rule is connected with sites of the employment of foreign citizens,” the Kremlin official says (nazaccent.ru/content/43751-v-sovbeze-zayavili-o-riskah-poyavleniya-v-rossii-zamknutyh-migrantskih-anklavov/). This trend, he says, create “additional risks of the rise of stable closed enclaves where in fact often Russian laws do not operate, where radical religious trends and anti-social ideas are propagandized” and where members of these communities hide out after their permitted stay in the Russian Federation has run out. Countering their existence is especially important because “unfriendly governments continue to try to use the migration factor to harm the interests of Russia,” Grebenkin says. These states try to stir up protest activity and encourage people living in these enclaves to ignore Russia law. Independent experts like Yury Krupnov, a Moscow demographer, and Natalya Voronina, a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law, agree that this is a problem; but they point out that the government has known about this for two decades and that solutions are not that difficult (nakanune.ru/articles/123335/ and mk.ru/social/2025/03/31/etnicheskie-anklavy-predstavlyayushhie-riski-i-ugrozy-dlya-obshhestva-uzhe-sushhestvuyut-v-rossii.html). They suggest that the authorities restore something like the registration system that existed in Soviet times and not allow more than a certain small percentage of people of different nationality or religion to live in it. But taking that step would hit far more than these minorities and likely infuriate many residents of Russia. One thing both Russian officials and Russian experts do agree on is that it is inappropriate to call these closed ethnic enclaves ghettos, an approach that continues Soviet practice and is both true and false (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/there-are-no-ghettos-in-russia-moscow.html). It is true because most of these enclaves form around a particular employer and do not have a complete social hierarchy as traditional ghettos elsewhere do; but it is wrong because the longer such enclaves exist – and many in Russia are more than 25 years old – the more characteristics of ghettos they share.