MOSCOW — Russia’s government has said it will impose tough limits on the number of foreign players in the country’s top soccer league, hoping that the measure can revive Russia’s languishing domestic talent before the country hosts the World Cup in 2018.

On Monday, Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sports minister, promised he would “cut back on foreign players in a very tough way” after the adoption of a law last week empowering the ministry to regulate the number of foreign players on teams in the country’s top division, the Russian Premier League. The law did not set a specific limit, but the Football Union of Russia, the country’s governing body for soccer, has recommended that clubs be compelled to field at least six Russians in every match, a formula Mutko has said he supports.

Mutko said limits were necessary to improve the quality of homegrown Russian players, whose performance, he said, was suffering because they were being crowded out by expensive foreign talent.

“Our current limit only has four Russians on each match team sheet, and we have 16 teams in the league,” Mutko said. “Do the math — you can see how many Russians are playing.”