Tashkent, Uzbekistan – A separatist warlord turned Russian lawmaker said he wasn’t “kidding around” when calling for Moscow to annex Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations whose citizens flock north in search of jobs.
“I sincerely stand for a simple annexation of all territories labour migrants come to us from, for teaching them Russian right where they are. Not here, but in Uzbekistan, for example,” Zakhar Prilepin, a novelist who fought for separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region and now co-chairs A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin socialist party, told a news conference in Moscow in December.
