Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill to hand out hectares of land free of charge in Russia's Far East in a bid to attract people to the vast region.
The law was published on the official law information portal on May 2.
The offer is open to all Russian citizens, with the only requirement being that they put the land to use.
via www.rferl.org
Interesting. I suspect not a lot of Russians will actually take up the offer. There's not a whole lot of infrastructure in the region.
But why would Russia seek to shift a significant portion of its population to the east?
Well, for one thing, there are vast natural resources in the area that simply haven't even been identified, let alone extracted. Having people in the region to help find and exploit those resources could potentially be a boon the domestic Russian economy.
Secondly, you don't hear much about it, but Russia has an illegal immigration problem, with as many as one million Chinese living in Russia, and the threat of a Chinese expansion into Siberia has colored the Russian thought on the region as far back as the Czars.
XBradTC 
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