Starting September 1, migrants in Moscow and the Moscow Region will be registered through a special mobile application. The system is being introduced on an experimental basis, and if it is deemed successful it may later be extended to other parts of Russia.
The experiment is set out in a law regulating cases in which a migrant receives a work patent in Moscow while living in the surrounding region, or works in St. Petersburg while residing in the Leningrad Region. Officials say the new system is meant to simplify some procedures: for example, migrants will be able to register at their place of residence without providing the landlord’s passport details.
The application is called Amina and can be downloaded through RuStore. It was developed by order of GBU Infogorod, the institution responsible for the Moscow mayor’s office digital projects.
Using the Kontur.Focus database, Novaya Gazeta Europe found that in July 2025 Infogorod signed a contract with the company IT2G. Under that agreement, Moscow will pay 1,305,004,874.14 rubles for work on developing the state information system of the multifunctional migration center and maintaining it in 2025–2027.
IT2G was the only bidder for the billion-ruble project. The IT company has been receiving state contracts for many years, mostly from Infogorod. In 2022, the newspaper Vedomosti described IT2G as one of the largest contractors for Moscow’s Department of Information Technology.
A source cited by the publication who works on migration issues in Moscow said the app is expected over time to gain the ability to process some documents as well. At the same time, according to the source, the app itself is a modified version of Social Monitoring, the system introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to track citizens’ movements.
The Moscow mayor’s office website says the app is mandatory for citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Ukraine who come to Moscow and the Moscow Region for work. It also states that in a year other foreign nationals will be required to install Amina as well.