NUR-SULTAN -- Some 200,000 foreigners have applied for Kazakh individual identification numbers to be eligible to work and have bank accounts in the Central Asian nation since Russian citizens came in droves to neighboring Kazakhstan after Moscow announced a partial mobilization for the war in Ukraine in September.
Kazakh Deputy Minister of Digital Development Aset Turysov, who gave the information to journalists on October 26, did not elaborate on how many of the applicants were Russian citizens, but Kazakh officials said earlier that almost 300,000 Russian citizens had entered Kazakhstan since September 21, and half of them stayed on.
On October 26, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Social Protection said that, since September 21, in addition to Russian citizens who applied for permanent residence, almost 600 Russian citizens of Kazakh origin took advantage of Kazakhstan’s law on the relocation of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad and received resident status and work rights in the country.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens have left the country mostly for Kazakhstan, Georgia, Mongolia, and Turkey since the beginning of the partial mobilization for the war in Ukraine.
Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February.