The news that over 600 Tajik students were expelled from Russian universities during 2025 seems like the latest spat in the love-hate relationship that seems to define Tajikistan’s links with Russia (can’t live with you, can’t live without you sort of thing).
Yet, when the news comes from the Tajik government, it’s clear that there’s more going on than first meets the eye. The Ministry of Education and Science reports that places have been found for these students in Tajik universities and that many students didn’t want to go back to Russia anyway. If you stop reading here, you’d conclude that this is good news for the student and well played Tajikistan.
But let’s dig a little deeper into why these students were kicked out. Rather than this being a university issue, it’s a foreign affairs problem. The students were deported from Russia and so have been physically unable to resume their studies, leaving the universities no choice but to take them off their books.
The Russian government say they’ve broken the law; the students argue the opposite. A Ministry of Education official noted they’d received just a handful of complaints from scholarship funded students who’d been forced to leave in 2023, but that number has clearly grown significantly since then.
This is connected to the fallout of a 2024 terrorist attack at a concert venue near Moscow that was allegedly carried out by Tajik nationals. Since then, deportations of Tajiks from Russia have increased significantly. It looks like students have now got caught up in this clampdown that has extended well beyond the migrant workers who are the typical scapegoats when Russia feels the need to assert greater border control.
The agreement to find domestic places for the expelled students was undertaken in conjunction with Russian counterparts, according to the Ministry of Education. That plus the fact that there are still over 6,000 Tajik students in Russia suggests that the bilateral relationship isn’t broken, but it remains unpredictable and that’s not good for anyone.
Emma Harden-Wolfson 
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