The article deals with the evolution of the Russian emigration processes at the turn of the 21st century. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Russian emigration flows over the past 25 years, the authors highlighted five emigration waves characterized by their main emigrant categories and emigration channels. Attention has been given not only to the size of the emigration flows but also to the emigration flow’s own compositional characteristics, especially age structure. The authors’ benchmark analysis of the Russian emigration data provided by the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation and the data on Russian immigrants provided by the national statistics services of foreign countries showed the overwhelming quantitative discrepancies in the migration flows set out in the Russian statistics, thus underestimating the intensity of emigration.

The article deals with emigration from Russia in the period between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The emigration from Russia has changed significantly since the early 1990s. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative analyses, the authors identify five major waves of emigration characterized by specific major categories of emigrants and motives for emigration. They examine the scales and structural characteristics of various flows of emigration, especially with regard to their age aspect. The analyses reveals that different waves of migration predominantly involve people of certain age groups, and the impact of these waves on the general population age structure will be markedly different, so that the results of this research can further be applied to modeling Russian age structure at various retrospective scenarios. The authors' comparative studies of statistics published by the Russian Federal State Statistical Agency and the statistical agencies of foreign countries show major discrepancies, suggesting that Russian data underplay the scale of emigration of Russian citizens.

Purpose: to prove the necessity of changing the direction of the Russian Federation migration policy towards repatriation and to substantiate the contribution of the new migration policy to the labor resources replacement. Methods: the materials prepared by experts of the IPM «Forum Pereselencheskih Organizacii» («Right to Homeland» project (President of the Russian Federation grant for the development of civil society provided by the Presidential Grants Fund No. 20-2-002592 dated 06 July 2020). Findings: substantiated the necessity of restructuring the migration policy towards repatriation; analyzed the potential effect of the migration policy, built in accordance with the principle of humanity, on the participation of the migrant population in the Russian Federation labor force. Conclusions: The Russian Federation, being at the second stage of depopulation, is forced to take effective measures: taking into account the need to cope with negative socio-economic and demographic trends, Russia should implement measures to attract migrants, especially Russians living abroad, and to ensure their settlement in historical homeland.

The article analyzes the migration relations of Ukraine and Russia in comparison with the migration relations of Ukraine and the countries of the community. The data of statistical observation of Ukraine and various host countries on migration processes from Ukraine, as well as the results of the author’s sociological study of the direction, motivation and prospects for the movement of citizens of Ukraine are presented. Conclusions are drawn about the use of demographic threats in connection with the increased outflow of citizens from Ukraine and the consequences of the transformation of Ukrainian migration flows for Russia.