About one million foreigners are currently officially registered with the migration authorities in Moscow and 1.5 million in surrounding areas, a senior migration official reported on Tuesday.

      “We have a centralized database of foreign nationals. Today we have obtained the most recent figures: there is about a million of foreign nationals in Moscow and 1.5 million - in the Moscow Region,” deputy head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) Yelena Radochina told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. She also added that about 3.65 million foreigners are estimated to live in Russia illegally.

      The number of officially registered migrant workers in Moscow stands at about 200,000, while in Moscow region this number is around 240,000. Most of these migrants have come from former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Tajikistan, where the economical situation is still very bad. Russian economy is heavily dependent on immigrant labor, though the situation with foreign migrants in Russia causes descontent within Russian society and sometimes give rise to accidents involving foreigners and local community.

      The latest incident took place at a Moscow market in late July, when a policeman was seriously injured in an attack by a worker while trying to detain a suspected sex offender. After that Russian officials inspected most big markets in Russian regions and deported thousands of illegal migrants.