Residents of an apartment complex in the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk recently received an unusual message.
"Starting from Monday, May 4, the territory of your residential complex will be cleaned by migrant workers from India," the firm behind the housing development announced, adding, "Our company was forced to take this step due to a critical shortage of workers."
The announcement swiftly spread to local media, where reactions were overwhelmingly negative. "Our boys are being finished off at the front, the nation is being deliberately destroyed, and these [Indian citizens] are being shipped in to us," one woman wrote, in the top comment under a report on the Indian workers.
Similar situations have emerged throughout Ukraine, including in the Zakarpattia region where a woodworking factory recently hired 150 workers from Bangladesh. In Cherkasy, unspecified foreign nationals are set to begin a road construction project in the central Ukrainian city.
"The issue of attracting foreign workers is gradually moving from a theoretical discussion into a practical one," Vasyl Voskoboynyk, the head of Ukraine's Migration Policy Office, told RFE/RL.
The migration expert stressed that the overall number of foreign workers in Ukraine remains less than the 22,000 registered in the country before the war and subsequent exodus from the country. But Voskoboynyk has estimated roughly 30 percent of jobs throughout the country remain unfilled.
Amid the ongoing war, women in Ukraine have stepped into many positions traditionally the preserve of men, but some physically arduous jobs remain difficult to fill with female workers.
The labor crisis in Ukraine began with the exodus of millions of people in the days following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. The economic hollowing-out of the country was exacerbated by ever-expanding military recruitments and a 2025 law permitting men aged between 18 to 22 to leave the country.
Voskoboynyk calls for a "a clear and controlled system" to attract workers.
"If Ukraine seriously wants to attract workers from Asia, Africa, or Latin America in the future, migration procedures will need to become faster and simpler while still remaining regulated and controlled," he said.
On top of work and residency permits, migrants seeking work in Ukraine -- where international airports remain closed -- currently require transit visas through neighboring countries.
But Voskoboynyk acknowledges unease within society over increasing numbers of foreign workers.
"For many people it feels unnatural that Ukrainians are fighting and dying while others arrive to work and build their lives here," Voskoboynyk says. "At the same time," he adds, labor shortages in critical industries are pushing the country into "a difficult discussion between emotional perception and economic reality."
In Russia, a similar shortage in unskilled laborers amid the war has seen a rapid uptick in numbers of workers arriving from southern Asian countries.
Local media report that 9,300 work permits were issued to Bangladeshi citizens in 2025, more than triple Russia's 2024 numbers. Some 56,500 work permits were issued to Indian citizens in 2025, a 56 percent jump compared to the previous year.
Migrant workers from Central Asia, long a mainstay of Russia's labor market, are increasingly avoiding the country due in part to fears of being press-ganged into frontline military roles.
The decline in Central Asian workers in Russia accelerated in the wake of an Islamist terror attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall in March 2024 that left 151 people dead. Four Tajik nationals were arrested for the mass killing, and rights groups reported a wave of attacks on Central Asians in Russia in the aftermath of the atrocity.
In September 2024, Kyrgyzstan warned its citizens against travel to Russia.
For Indian migrant workers, Russia remains a relatively attractive option among a shrinking pool of destinations.
"With growing immigration restrictions in the US and the West, and the war in the Middle East, Russia offers a fresh opportunity for gig workers," Rajan Kumar, an expert in India-Russia relations at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told RFE/RL.
The increase in Indian workers, Kumar says, is a "win-win" for both countries given Russia has amassed billions of rupees from selling crude oil to Delhi in recent years, a currency Moscow had previously struggled to find a use for.
"The accumulated rupees can be used for paying these migrant workers," Kumar says, making cash remittances sent from workers in Russia to their families in India relatively frictionless. Indian workers in low-level factory jobs reportedly earn around the equivalent of $660 per month in Russia, more than triple what a similar job would pay in India.
Many prospective workers remain wary of being duped into fighting for Russia, Kumar says, a topic that has become "a serious issue inside India." Several reports have emerged recently of Indians who signed up for construction jobs in Russia ending up with rifles in their hands in Ukraine.
An engineer at an agricultural factory in the Moscow region that began employing Indians and Cubans in 2024 told Reuters the employment situation inside Russia is "grave." Local Russians, he said, are unwilling to work for the few hundreds of dollars per month the job pays, and the Central Asian workers who once filled those positions are increasingly hard to find.
In Ukraine, commentators have sparked fierce debate by suggesting the country could face massive demographic shifts in coming years unless current trajectories change.
"If we don't learn to be smarter ourselves, we will import not tens of thousands, but millions" of workers, Ukrainian economist Timofiy Mylovanov warned in a recent interview.
"Calculate the ratio between those who work and those who have retired. This is critical, and low-paid migrants will fill the gaps," Mylovanov said. The head of the Kyiv School of Economics called education in engineering and AI technologies the "key to survival" for the country.
"We will either define the future ourselves or it will be done for us."
