Among the various challenges that Russia has faced since its ill-conceived full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the most acute has been a severe labor shortage. The Kremlin’s response has rested on three pillars: mobilizing underutilized domestic labor, expanding prison labor, and increasing labor migration. When it comes to Russia’s labor shortage, the cure is worse than the disease. Altogether, while Russia’s labor crisis is becoming a structural constraint on the Kremlin’s wartime economy, domestic stability, and long-term geopolitical ambitions, its responses tend to exacerbate rather than resolve the problem. Meanwhile, efforts to rely more heavily on foreign workers increasingly collide with rising nationalist sentiment and restrictive migration policies.