Russia aims to turn Siberia into the center of a new industrialization push and attract workers eastward, Security Council Secretary and former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday.
Shoigu said the state should encourage migration through higher pay, subsidies and broader benefits.
“In the Russian Empire and the Soviet era, the state created conditions so citizens would willingly go to Siberia and develop the national economy,” the RBC news website quoted him as saying.
He proposed tax breaks and administrative incentives for businesses and social support for workers, including housing and car loans that would be written off after 10 years of service in the region.
The government is meanwhile preparing measures to counter Siberia’s population decline.
Under an updated development plan through 2035, the interior, labor and health ministries have been instructed to stabilize the region’s population by reducing mortality, addressing labor shortages and encouraging the resettlement of ethnic Russians from abroad.
Siberia’s population has fallen 12% since 1991 — the steepest drop after the Far East — and now stands at 16.5 million, or 11% of Russia’s total.
About 287,000 economically active people leave the region each year, and the number of residents aged 25-44 could shrink another 20% by 2030.
Presidential human rights council member Sergei Karaganov said in September that Russia’s “300-year European journey has ended” and called for a shift of focus eastward.
He proposed sending veterans of the war in Ukraine to build a “new Siberian Russia,” comparing it to labor efforts that built the Trans-Siberian Railway and Baikal-Amur Mainline.
Karaganov said he is developing a project called Eastern Turn 2.0, focused on developing North-South transport corridors linking Russia through Siberia with Asian markets.