This chapter examines the evolution and the socio-legal characteristics of the entry bar legislation in Russia, with reference to the legal developments in the areas of deportation and removal in the United States and the United Kingdom. I adopted a comparative perspective to cast more light on the migration governance processes in Russia and to move away from the intellectually dead-end explanations that exoticize Russia and invoke arguments about how law does not really work there. The comparative perspective demonstrates that the entry bar legislation follows a similar logic to the developments surrounding deportation and removal orders of other migrants-receiving jurisdictions: a shift from remedial to increasingly punitive sanctions, from putting an end to an ongoing immigration law violation to punishing migrants for their post-entry misconduct. The disproportionality of the entry bar in relation to the actual offences for which it is administered demonstrates, however, that the global developments are very much combined in Russia with the local legal specificities and the legacy of its punitive and repressive legal system. This, in turn, helps to question the criminal/civil labels in migration law more broadly – suggesting, in particular, the danger of extending criminal liability to what are essentially regulatory violations.