In late April, Russian authorities approved a budget of 220 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) in order to develop new genetic technologies over the next eight years. The document published on the government's website says that the main purpose of the program is "to decrease critical dependence of Russian science on foreign genetic and biological databases" and on foreign specialized software and other technologies.

Russia does indeed ban the export of "biomaterial", which is the reason why 23andme tests are inaccessible here. It would at least be good if there were to be Russian equivalents.

"I have never heard Putin or anybody else in the Kremlin mention the word 'race,'" Svetlana Gannushkina, a senior human rights defender helping migrants told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. "But once Putin said to me: 'I agree we need migrants, but preferably well-educated Slavs of a fertile age.'"