The news that Vladimir Putin is pushing for 135,000 new young recruits in ‘the biggest autumn conscription’ for nearly ten years comes as no surprise. Recently, the Russian leader’s war-machine has been scraping the bottom of the barrel: convicts freed from prison, men in their sixties, debt-ridden farmers, factory workers pulled straight off the line…and foreigners who don’t even speak Russian.
The Russian leader’s war-machine has been scraping the bottom of the barrel
When Putin began his ‘special military operation’ in February 2022, he expected the entire nation to rally in support of his war. But reality hit hard: plunging approval ratings, economic collapse, and a mass exodus. When partial mobilisation was rolled out in late 2022, hundreds of thousands of men fled, jamming roads to Georgia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Over 2,000 people were arrested at anti-mobilisation protests.
Wary of attempting further large-scale conscription, Putin’s regime turned to contract soldiers: men who sign up for pay, not ideology. The lower limit for admission is 18 years old, the upper 65. Many men in their fifties, the Russian media has reported, are fighting and dying on the frontlines, while the average age of contract volunteers is now above 40. There are documented enlistment cases of men with severe medical conditions, such as diabetes, previously deemed unfit for military service, but now a welcome addition to the ranks. Combat duty wears these men out quickly. Those who signed up first were fed into the bloodiest fights; most got killed or wounded shortly after.
The men are overwhelmingly from rural regions: 120 deaths per 10,000 men in Tuva, 91 in Buryatia, and 89 in Altai Republic, compared with only three in Moscow. Inescapably, in rural Russia, the leverage is stronger. Collective responsibility norms persist: a village told to supply ‘volunteers’ sees names marked. Those who refuse can face retaliatory measures – denial of public services or bureaucratic harassment. Poverty, limited job options, and tight-knit oversight make it easy for authorities to find and pressure candidates – and hard for them to say no.
Urban residents, by contrast, are trickier to pin down. In Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other large cities, people can simply not open their doors when the voenkomat (military enlistment office) representatives knock, or move to another district altogether. Apartment blocks with hundreds of tenants give cover: it’s easy to pretend you’re not home, or that someone else lives there. Police may stage raids, yet in sprawling urban centres with millions of residents, enforcement is inconsistent and patchy.
But in the countryside, defiance is rare. A cultural legacy of deference to officials mean that when the head of the district says ‘go,’ many see it as a direct order from Moscow, as if Putin himself were giving a command. In that climate, the line between volunteering and being delivered up as cannon fodder all but disappears.
There are financial incentives for those doing the recruiting too. Local ‘voenkomat’ staff and affiliated agents receive bonuses for each man signed, turning enlistment into a bounty business. In some regions, payments range from 50,000 (£450) to 100,000 (£900) rubles per recruit, depending on urgency and quotas. This practice resembles the 19th-century ‘Shanghaiing’ of sailors in the British Empire: once a man is targeted, the goal is to deliver him to the ship, willing or not.
But this system is not supplying enough men for Putin’s ‘meat grinder’ and recruiters have been forced to look beyond Russia’s borders. Foreign nationals from South and Central Asia, Africa, and North Korea have appeared in Russian ranks. There are documented cases of men from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka being enlisted – sometimes voluntarily, often through deception or coercion.
Here, the methods vary. Some foreigners are already in Russia as migrant workers, vulnerable to police checks and visa law violations. These migrants are given a choice: sign a contract and get a Russian passport, or face deportation, fines, and fabricated criminal charges. In major Russian cities, police have staged raids in markets and hostels, handing detainees over to military enlistment officers.
The Indian government has intervened publicly in several cases. In March 2024, New Delhi demanded Moscow return at least two dozen Indian nationals who were lured with promises of ‘hospital and kitchen work’ but instead sent to the trenches. Families reported that contracts were in Russian – unreadable to the men – and that their passports were confiscated. While a handful were repatriated, most remained stuck in units or unaccounted for. Sri Lanka faced similar issues, with veterans of its own civil war tricked into contracts and then reported missing. The BBC/Mediazona casualty list includes growing numbers of non-Slavic foreign names, currently over five hundred.
Then there is the weaponisation of military service as a kind of punishment. This was nothing new in Russia, but the Ukraine war has made it systematic. Cases span petty offenders, political dissidents, and even random young men caught in the wrong place.
One particularly stark account comes from Dagestan. A teenage boy, Said Murtazaliyev, traveled to Moscow during school holidays in January. Police stopped him for an ID check, accused him of fabricated offences, and took him to a precinct. There, he was beaten, threatened, and presented with a contract. Under duress – and fearing criminal charges – he signed. Days later, he was in a training camp; weeks later, he was deployed to the frontlines. On 7 March, he sent his mother a video message revealing a corruption scheme in his unit: Said’s commander forced him to collect over 1 million rubles (£9,000) from fellow soldiers as payment to be spared the most dangerous assault. The boy was afraid that his commanding officers might kill him for making this public. The next day, he was declared missing in action.
Opposition figures have also been targeted. Upon his release during the US-Russia political prisoner exchange, Oleg Orlov, a prominent human rights activist, told the media he’d been approached by recruiters while in prison. They offered him ‘freedom’ for enlisting. He was 70 years old at that time, but the recruiters said his age ‘wasn’t a problem’. Other dissidents and anti-war protesters in occupied parts of Ukraine were coerced to join the local ‘people’s militias.’
The penal route is even more direct. Convicts with fresh sentences – for theft, minor assaults, or simply repeated protest participation – have been taken from courtrooms to enlistment offices. In some occupied Ukrainian territories, men have been seized off the streets and sent to fight, their ‘contracts’ backdated to give an appearance of legality.
This approach feeds a force of men who are unwilling, untrained, and resentful – dangerous both to themselves and to any military plan. Losses are staggering, and costs mount; Russian law obliges the state to pay compensation for the dead and wounded, a bill that grows with every failed push.
Will Putin get his 135,000 new young recruits? With a reported million Russian soldiers already dead or wounded since the war began, the Ukrainian meat-mincer will, sad to say, make fast work of them. Russia’s manpower problem, with all its attendant woes for the future, is a reality Putin cannot merely wish away. That remains true however many desperate rolls of the roulette wheel – as shadows lengthen and the time for settling up bears down on him – the Russian president is willing to attempt.
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