Migrants committed about 18,000 offenses in the first eight months of 2026, 39% fewer than a year earlier, according to the Investigative Committee. The agency also reported increases in some crime categories.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the share of offenses attributed to foreign nationals fell from 5% to 3% of all recorded crimes in 2026. The agency’s press service released the figures after a meeting chaired by Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin.
The committee said migrants committed about 18,000 offenses in the first eight months of the year, 39% fewer than in the same period last year. It said the number of serious crimes attributed to migrants was cut in half.
At the same time, the committee reported a 25% increase in cases involving crimes committed by people who had recently obtained Russian citizenship. It also said crimes linked to ethnic groups rose 13% and that investigators identified up to 3,000 cases of organizing illegal migration.
The figures are the Investigative Committee’s own data; the report did not provide a detailed methodology, category-by-category absolute counts or an independent assessment of the reasons for the changes. The agency said people from the South Caucasus and Central Asian countries were most often involved in the ethnic-group cases.