AMID LOSSES, RUSSIAN ARMY RAMPS UP RECRUITMENT
Military cold-calling eligible men, tries to reactivate reservists
Russia is scrambling to recruit men to fight in Ukraine after major losses in the early months of the war left the army stretched thin and some soldiers disenchanted.
The Kremlin has so far declined to order a general mobilization of draft-age soldiers, because this could signal that the war is not proceeding as well as depicted in the Russian media and threaten to stir grassroots resistance to the military campaign.
Instead, the military has embarked on a campaign to expand the ranks of active soldiers who have voluntarily signed contracts by coldcalling eligible men and trying to reactivate reservists.
“These efforts represent a form of shadow mobilization. These are piecemeal efforts that allow the Russian military to sustain itself in the war, but do not address the fundamental deficit in manpower,” wrote Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a think tank in Virginia, in a recent analysis.
Just a few weeks after the Feb. 24 invasion, online job sites began advertising thousands of positions offered by the Defense Ministry, which is looking for all kinds of service members, from antitank grenadiers to drivers and reconnaissance snipers. The listings, which were first reported by the BBC Russian service, are republished or updated every few days.
In a recruiting ad posted in Rostov-on-Don, just a few hundred miles away from Ukraine, a deep voice narrates: “Test the limits of your abilities! No, screw the limits, are you ready to break yourself every day?” The action-packed ad continues: “You’ve decided to prove something to yourself. You are trying to detect an enemy in every shadow because if there is no enemy, there is no fight, and if there is no fight, there is no victory.”
Job listings and recruitment flyers offer a modest base pay that can go up to $3,500 to 4,000 a month with bonuses. These sums eclipse the Russian median salary of about $600 a month and, together with low-interest mortgages and various other subsidies, can be appealing, especially in a shrinking economy.
Russia is also conducting its spring draft, which seeks to conscript about 130,000 men between the ages of 18 and 27 by mid-July. By law, conscripts can’t be sent into battle unless they undergo at least four months of training, and the Kremlin has repeatedly vowed that the conscripts won’t be sent to Ukraine at all. But there have been at least two officially confirmed cases where hundreds of inexperienced soldiers ended up in the war zone.
Recruiters across the country have also been calling eligible men to promote contract military service.
Nikita Yuferev, a municipal lawmaker from St. Petersburg, got such a call in late May. “[The caller] explained that her task was simply to call and inform: ‘They gave me a list, and I call up the district’s residents. Those of conscription age,’ she said,” Yuferev recounted. The recruiter told Yuferev that she couldn’t disclose compensation or other details of the proposed employment over the phone and offered him to come to the station in person.
“At the end of our conversation, she told me verbatim: ‘Before going to an appointment, you need to think carefully. I am not persuading you. This is a very big decision in your life,’” Yuferev added.
Yuferev declined the invitations, fearing that if he went to the office, he might not return home.
British intelligence estimates that Russian losses in the first three months of the war were up to 20,000, while Ukrainian officials said Russian losses were nearing 30,000. Kofman wrote that “a reasonable estimate, based on limited information, would place Russian troops killed in action at somewhere 7,000-15,000, with the more likely figure close to 10,000.”