Russia will ban migrant workers from ex-Soviet states from working in markets and street kiosks from April 2007, the Kremlin's Web site said, as part of a drive to protect ethnic Russians' way of life.
In a newspaper interview on Thursday a senior immigration service official, Vyacheslav Postavnin, also said he wanted to stop foreigners concentrating in any one region or area.
Azeris, Tajiks, Uzbeks and other immigrants from the former Soviet Union dominate markets across Russia but with Russian nationalism on the rise, resentment has grown against them and their business success. In September, rioting ethnic Russians chased migrant Chechens out of Kondopoga, a town in the north-west. Attacks on dark-skinned immigrants are commonplace.
"From April 1 until the end of 2007, we will reduce the number to zero, we are going to limit the opportunities for foreigners to work in retail, kiosks and markets," Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov told President Vladimir Putin in a conversation posted on the official Web site www.kremlin.ru.