For common wage earners in Russia, it’s a giant payday. For criminals in search of to escape the cruel circumstances and abuse in jail, it’s an opportunity at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a greater life, it’s a simplified path to citizenship.
All they’ve to do is signal a contract to struggle in Ukraine.
As Russia seeks to replenish its forces in almost 4 years of struggle — and keep away from an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it’s pulling out all of the stops to discover new troops to ship into the battlefield.
Some come from overseas to struggle in what has turn into a bloody struggle of attrition. After signing a mutual protection treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea despatched hundreds of troopers to assist Russia defend its Kursk area from a Ukrainian incursion.
Men from South Asian nations, together with India, Nepal and Bangladesh, complain of being duped into signing up to struggle by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the identical has occurred to residents from their nations.
Russian numbers in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin informed his annual information convention final month that 700,000 Russian troops are preventing in Ukraine. He gave the identical quantity in 2024, and a barely decrease determine – 617,000 – in December 2023. It’s unclear if these numbers are correct.
Still hidden are the numbers of army casualties, with Moscow having launched restricted official figures. The British Defense Ministry mentioned final summer season that greater than 1 million Russian troops might have been killed or wounded.
Independent Russian information web site Mediazona, along with the BBC and a staff of volunteers, scoured information experiences, social media and authorities web sites and collected the names of over 160,000 troops killed. More than 550 of these had been foreigners from over two dozen nations.
How Russia will get new troopers
Unlike Ukraine, the place martial regulation and nationwide mobilization has been in place for the reason that begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad call-up.
When a restricted mobilization of 300,000 males was tried later that yr, tens of hundreds of individuals fled overseas. The effort stopped after a couple of weeks when the goal was met, however a Putin decree left the door open for one more call-up. It additionally made all army contracts successfully open-ended and barred troopers from quitting service or being discharged, until they reached sure age limits or had been incapacitated by accidents.
Since then, Moscow has largely relied on what it describes as voluntary enlistment.
The circulate of voluntary enlistees signing army contracts has remained sturdy, topping 400,000 final yr, Putin mentioned in December. It was not doable to independently confirm the declare. Similar numbers had been introduced in 2024 and 2023.
Activists say these contracts typically stipulate a hard and fast time period of service, reminiscent of one yr, main some potential enlistees to consider the dedication is short-term. But contracts are mechanically prolonged indefinitely, they are saying.
The incentives
The authorities offers excessive pay and in depth advantages to enlistees. Regional authorities supply varied enlistment bonuses, generally amounting to tens of hundreds of {dollars}.
In the Khanty-Mansi area of central Russia, for instance, an enlistee would get about $50,000 in varied bonuses, in accordance to the native authorities. That’s greater than twice the typical annual revenue in the area, the place month-to-month salaries in the primary 10 months of 2025 had been reported to be simply over $1,600.
There are also tax breaks, debt reduction and different perks.
Despite Kremlin claims of counting on voluntary enlistment, media experiences and rights teams say conscripts — males aged 18-30 performing fixed-term obligatory army service and exempted from being despatched to Ukraine — are sometimes coerced by superiors into signing contracts that ship them into battle.
Recruitment additionally extends to prisoners and these in pretrial detention facilities, a apply led early in the struggle by the late mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and adopted by the Defense Ministry. Laws now permit recruitment of each convicts and suspects in prison instances.
Targeting foreigners
Foreigners are also recruiting targets, each inside Russia and overseas.
Laws had been adopted providing accelerated Russian citizenship for enlistees. Russian media and activists additionally report that raids in areas the place migrants usually dwell or work lead to them being pressuring into army service, with new residents despatched to enlistment places of work to decide in the event that they’re eligible for obligatory service.
In November, Putin decreed that army service was obligatory for sure foreigners in search of everlasting residency.
Some reportedly are lured to Russia by trafficking rings promising jobs, then duping them into signing army contracts. Cuban authorities in 2023 recognized and sought to dismantle one such ring working from Russia.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud informed The Associated Press in 2024 that his nation requested Russia to return a whole lot of Nepali nationals who had been recruited to struggle in Ukraine, in addition to to repatriate the stays of these killed in the struggle. Nepal has since barred residents from touring to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts.
Also in 2024, India’s federal investigation company mentioned it broke up a community that lured not less than 35 of its residents to Russia below the pretext of employment. The males had been educated for fight and deployed to Ukraine in opposition to their will, with some “grievously injured,” the company mentioned.
When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, New Delhi mentioned its nationals who had been “misled” into becoming a member of the Russian military could be discharged.
Iraqi officers say about 5,000 of its residents have joined the Russian army together with an unspecified quantity who’re preventing alongside Ukrainian forces. Officials in Baghdad cracked down on such recruiting networks, with one man convicted final yr of human trafficking and sentenced to life in jail.
An unknown variety of Iraqis have been killed or gone lacking whereas preventing in Ukraine. Some households have reported that family members had been lured to Russia below false pretenses and pressured to enlist; in different instances, Iraqis have joined voluntarily for the wage and Russian citizenship.
Foreigners duped into preventing are particularly weak as a result of they don’t communicate Russian, don’t have any army expertise and are deemed “dispensable, to put it bluntly,” by army commanders, mentioned Anton Gorbatsevich of the activist group Idite Lesom, or “Get Lost,” which helps males desert from the military.
A drain on a slowing economic system
This month, a Ukrainian company for the remedy of prisoners of struggle mentioned over 18,000 international nationals had fought or are preventing on the Russian aspect. Almost 3,400 have been killed, and a whole lot of residents of 40 nations are held in Ukraine as POWs.
If true, that represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops that Putin mentioned are preventing for Russia in Ukraine.
Using foreigners is just one means to meet the fixed demand, mentioned Artyom Klyga, head of the authorized division on the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, noting Russian recruitment efforts seem to be steady. Most of these in search of assist from the group, which assists males in avoiding army service, are Russian residents, he mentioned.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia researcher on the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, mentioned the Kremlin has gotten extra “creative” in the final two years with attracting enlistees, together with foreigners.
But recruitment efforts have gotten “extremely expensive” for Russia, which faces a slowing economic system, she added.
