On February 23, 2025, the Chinese consulate in Russia again reminded Chinese citizens in the country to pay attention to Presidential Decree No. 821 signed by Vladimir Putin.

For Chinese miners in Russia, the decree presents a brutally practical “deadly choice”: give up residency status, or serve in the military first. Anyone hoping to stay legally and earn rubles may first have to pass through a combat zone.

The decree is clear: foreign men aged 18 to 65 who want to apply for long-term residence permits in Russia must agree to serve for at least one year in Russian military units and other formations.

Miners once went to Siberia for cheap electricity. Now, before the mining rigs have paid for themselves, the people behind them may be treated as expendable.

Can those who went looking for gold, along with tens of millions of yuan worth of computing power, still get out intact?

The Compliance Dead End

To be legal, enlist first. Many miners who went to Russia thought they were just passing through to make money abroad, far removed from the artillery fire at the front.

But since last year, a chain of measures aimed specifically at foreign miners has quietly been cast.

Step one: lure them out.

In 2024, Russia formally legalized cryptocurrency mining, briefly making the country look like paradise to miners.

But there was a condition: individual operators or companies with high power consumption had to join the official “miner registry,” fully disclosing wallet addresses and income.

Fail to report, and they faced heavy fines and equipment seizures.

The move forced every miner seeking legal, stable profits to hand over their name and background details. Once those details were submitted, the next step followed naturally.

Step two: lock in identity. As a foreigner, anyone who wants to legally register large-scale mining must hold a Russian long-term residence permit or have a registered address inside Russia. That is exactly where the most dangerous part of the trap lies.

Step three: strike the weak point. In 2025, Russia’s Presidential Decree No. 821 took effect, completely changing the rules for applying for long-term residence permits.

Applicants must either submit a military service contract with the Russian army, or provide proof that they are unfit for service.

That move cuts directly into a large group of foreign male mining workers who went to Russia. They had expected to obtain long-term residency by registering as sole proprietors or companies. Now that route is blocked.

The loop is now closed.

To mine legally, you must register under your real name. To register, you need to settle your residence status. To obtain that status, you must be ready to go to the front at any time.

First, legalization is used as bait to bring you into the open. Then harsh penalties force you into compliance. Finally, a residence permit turns you precisely into a potential source of soldiers.

You thought you brought machines to mine Bitcoin. But in the eyes of a wartime machine, you are the “mine.”

The Countdown for Nominee Holdings and Visa Runs

If long-term residency is risky, can miners rely on business visas and operate in the gray zone like guerrillas?

The answer is no. That path is being sealed off completely.

In the past, many miners exploited the loophole of “leaving the country once every 90 days,” and some even put mining farms under local nominees.

But since 2025, Russia has taken several hard measures, targeting people, conduct, and assets one by one.

First, immigration controls have tightened around individuals. Russia’s “controlled persons registry,” which took effect in February 2025, is highly precise: once a visa problem appears, bank accounts can be restricted immediately, with even daily spending subject to very low limits.

More importantly, police can detain people and begin deportation procedures within 48 hours without court approval. Mining on a business visa is, in essence, illegal work, and anyone doing it could be the next person removed.

Second, the legal classification of the conduct has changed. Under a draft criminal law amendment from December 2025, illegal mining could carry up to five years in prison and heavy fines.

What was once, at most, a regulatory violation is set to become a criminal offense. The space for surviving in the gray zone is being squeezed out article by article. Next, the assets come under scrutiny.

In February 2026, Putin further signed a new law giving courts the power to directly confiscate mining equipment and Bitcoin involved in cases.

Nasdaq-listed The9 once said Russia could “nationalize and confiscate the assets of foreign companies under certain circumstances.”

In Russia, it does not matter whose name the machines are registered under. If they are suspected of being illegal, they can all be seized.

And in any case, you cannot really hide.

Since the end of 2024, Russia’s power grid has built an integrated “sky-and-ground” inspection network.

In the air, thermal-imaging drones identify targets with precision. On the ground, AI power meters monitor activity in real time. At the endpoint, intelligent algorithms actively flag anomalies. In Dagestan alone, 73 cases of electricity theft for crypto mining were uncovered from January to November 2025, causing losses of 85.7 million rubles.

People, conduct, assets, and hiding places: all four routes are being blocked. The window for quietly mining by exploiting visa loopholes is closing.

The State Machine Wants Energy

Not computing power. Even if miners somehow resolve their identity issues and survive the risks of nominee ownership, there is no longer enough electricity for mining in Russia.

After China cleared out crypto mining in 2021, Siberia, with its naturally low temperatures and electricity prices of just a few mao per kilowatt-hour, became a refuge for miners around the world.

Russia’s largest mining company, BitRiver, got its start there. At its peak, it managed 175,000 mining rigs. In those years, if you had power and nerve, the money followed.

But the grid could not hold. By the end of 2024, mining operations were consuming 1.5% of Russia’s total electricity, pushing grids in multiple regions close to overload.

Aging infrastructure needs maintenance, and household heating cannot be cut. In parts of Russia that are not connected to natural gas, electric heating is the most affordable way to get through winter. These “power guzzlers” were naturally the first targets.

Starting in 2025, bans arrived in quick succession. Several regions in the North Caucasus and Siberia faced complete cutoffs or seasonal power restrictions. Even BitRiver could not withstand the pressure.

What crushed it was not the price of Bitcoin, but a combination of judicial debt collection, account freezes, and regional power limits.

As for foreign miners without local backing, the triple squeeze of “identity thresholds (military service contracts plus controlled-person registration), energy controls, and asset seizures” means they will be among the first to be sacrificed.

The window in which cheap electricity and nerve alone could fuel reckless growth has closed.

Under hard policy constraints, computing power is just code whose cable can be pulled at any moment.

When they left China in 2021, everyone was betting on the same thing: far from the center, with electricity, they could survive.

Four years later, reality has delivered a different answer.

You may outrun one country’s regulators, but not another country’s conscription order.

In the story of global miner migration, Russia’s chapter is drawing to a close.

For the people and machines that have not yet pulled out, the time window left to them is not large.