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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Russian army is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit people. Those willing to go to war, even despite huge sums, are in short supply.
The Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense gave local officials instructions to recruit contract soldiers to meet quotas under this year’s plan 409 thousand people. This is reported by the Financial Times citing sources.
“Local authorities are under enormous pressure forcing them every year to recruit the required number of soldiers,” says Yanis Klüge, a research fellow at the German Institute for Security Studies, who estimates the number of recruits based on budget data. “They know who has debts, who is under investigation, who recently lost their driver's license, and they prey on exactly these people.”.
As reported, a paradoxical situation is developing on the front. No matter how many new recruits Russia throws into battle (whom commanders immediately send into the meat grinder, without bothering to form combat-ready reserves), the army’s advance rates are slowing. According to the Institute for the Study of War, in the first half of the year it captured only 81 sq. km.
“Officials are trying to squeeze as much as possible from every category of men,” says Artem Kliga, head of the legal department of the Movement of Conscientious Objectors and coordinator of programs for Eastern Europe at the German NGO Connection e.V. “For each group there are tricks designed to deceive or pressure them into signing a contract.”
Among the methods are catching men directly on the streets, as the police did in Penza and Ulyanovsk, detention 35 of factory workers in Rostov, “conversations” by officials at home or at work with “suitable candidates,” among whom conditional punishment, debtors, and recently demobilized conscripts take place.
However, the results do not meet the generals’ goals, who seek to please Putin by killing as many people as possible on the front in order to advance another kilometer or capture another house in Maly Tokmachka. For example, as the police in the Khabarovsk region reported, last year it held 2500 such “conversations,” as a result of which only 32 people joined the army, with four of them suspected of criminal offenses.
New contract soldiers replenish front losses, but those willing to fight, despite huge sums offered, have “already long been in short supply,” says Grigoriy Sverdlín, founder of the “Go to the Forest” project.
Every year and every month the Russian army finds it harder to recruit people. Putin apparently postpones a new mobilization wave, so the Ministry of Defense must apply increasing pressure on various people to sign contracts.
The mass desertion is complicating the situation with replenishment. According to the human rights organization Peace Plea, at least 28 thousand people have been convicted of leaving a unit without authorization. The actual figure is probably at least twice as high, said Ukrainian analytical group Frontelligence Insight, citing internal Russian documents.
For recruiting new soldiers into an army that loses more than 30 thousand people killed and wounded each month (and this figure continues to grow), Russia now also pays decent money, giving rise to a whole industry of recruiters.
According to military analysts, Putin’s large territorial ambitions have led Russian forces to attempt to advance along the entire front line, achieving only limited gains at the cost of enormous losses. Recruits are sent directly to the front to plug gaps in offensive operations, not to form reserves, the publication notes.
“But although the number of troops deployed in Ukraine has increased, the scale of offensive actions has decreased,” says military analyst Michael Hoffman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
According to him, the Russian army has failed to adapt to the changed situation. If they cannot raise recruitment figures or carry out mobilization, Russian units will again experience personnel shortages, making them vulnerable. They will not only get bogged down in offensive operations but will eventually begin to lose significant ground on the battlefield.
It should be noted that there are more and more signs in the Russian information space that the Kremlin is preparing to strengthen mobilization readiness.
Earlier, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the Rada National Security and Defense Council (RNBO), Andriy Kovalenko, stated that Russia plans to mobilize more than 500 thousand people in the fall to continue its war against Ukraine.
Two-thirds of Russian regions pay recruiters contract soldiers.
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