Kyrgyzstan has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Russia in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) court over Moscow’s failure to comply with agreements related to migrant workers.
In a January 27 meeting of the Kyrgyz parliament’s labor and social issues committee, Azamat Mukanov, chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Mandatory Health Insurance Fund, said that the Russian side was violating several articles of an EAEU agreement pertaining to the provision of medical insurance policies to the families of migrant workers.
“The Kyrgyz side filed a lawsuit against the Russian side for failing to comply with the requirements set out in the EAEU agreements. Compulsory medical insurance policies must also be issued to family members of those working in Russia. This agreement is signed by five countries,” Mukanov said.
The EAEU was formed in 2015, with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan the original members, soon joined by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Ostensibly the EAEU encourages the free movement of goods and people across the union, but enforcement and application of the union’s rules has long been uneven.
The union’s rules require migrant workers from member states, and their families, to receive social protection, including medical insurance, under the same terms as citizens of the state in which they’re working.
But in November 2025, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced that migrants in Russia would only be able to receive free medical care after five years of legal work in Russia, contradicting the EAEU structures intended to provide equal treatment of member state citizens across the union.
The EAEU Court is based in Minsk and is comprised of judges from each of the five member states. Mukanov said a hearing was held last week and a decision is expected in two weeks.
There are millions of migrant workers in Russia, many of them from Central Asia. Numbers fluctuate with the seasons, but in March 2025 Kyrgyzstan’s Deputy Minister of Labor, Social Security, and Migration Bakyt Darmankul uulu said that more than 370,000 Kyrgyz were registered as migrants in Russia in 2024. Russia remains a top destination for Kyrgyz migrant workers, and remittances stand as a significant financial crutch for many Kyrgyz families. As a proportion of GDP, remittances have been as high as 32 percent in 2021, though that had fallen to around 17.7 percent in 2024, according to World Bank Data.
Back in 2015, when Kyrgyzstan was teetering between joining or not the EAEU, the presumed easing of access for Kyrgyz workers was a major draw for membership. And yet, over the years – particularly since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022 and the Crocus City Hall attack in 2024 – Russian policies on migrant workers have grown more restrictive.
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