About 150 thousand people returned to Russia from foreign countries in 2016, the interior ministry said. State support for repatriates and the anti-Russia campaign in Western countries were the top reasons given.

According to the report, quoted by Izvestia daily, the total number of people who returned to Russia from foreign nations in 2016 was 146,585. Most of them returned from former Soviet republics, but as many as 30,000 people returned to Russia from EU countries, the report reads.