Vladimir Putin is opting for increasingly desperate recruitment methods for his war in Ukraine, according to a new report.
The Russian dictator is said to be eager to avoid an unpopular mass mobilization and is leaning on a system of bonuses, tricks, and abductions to drag the new recruits he desperately needs for his army’s meat-grinder tactics on the front lines.
In the city of Penza in the south of the country, men have been dragged from the streets and workshops by people in plain clothes and made to sign contracts to sign up, according to a new report from the Financial Times citing activists.
“Year by year and month by month, it’s harder for the Russian army to find people,” exiled anti-war activist Grigroy Sverdlin, director of Get Lost, told the FT.
His organization, run from Georgia, helps Russian troops desert the army and leave the country. “Putin is evidently putting off a new wave of mobilization, so the defense ministry has to put more pressure on all sorts of people to sign contracts,” he added.
“They replenish the losses with people who sign new contracts, and there haven’t been enough people willing to sign up for quite some time—even for the huge sums offered in the contracts.”
The last mobilization push was in 2022 and saw hundreds of thousands of Russians flee the country to escape conscription. However, fears have spiked that another could be planned for after the State Duma elections in September.
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Its military law expert Artyom Klyga said that Putin is now “trying to squeeze as much as they can from every category of men.”
“There are traps for each group to trick them or pressure them into signing a contract,” he said.
The system of bonuses can see new recruits earn up to $56,000. But the FT reports they are also being offered to third-party individuals, who cold-call potential recruits for a finder’s fee.
There have also been reports of efforts to convince people in delicate positions, such as those serving suspended sentences or suspects in criminal investigations.
The German Institute for International and Security Affairs’s Russian expert Janis Kluge told the newspaper, “Local authorities are under enormous pressure to recruit enough soldiers each year.
“They know who is in debt, who is under police investigation and who has recently lost their driving license, and they home in on these men.”
Sources told the newspaper that the Kremlin has stepped up pressure on local authorities to help it reach its 409,000 target, this year, giving them the power to summon people to have their military records verified.
Some women, meanwhile, have been reported to have been contacted because their educations and backgrounds would be useful in a theater of war.
Former pharmacology student Indira told the FT she and several of her other classmates had received draft notices. “The fact of receiving it is itself certainly very concerning, but there is no reason to worry just yet,” she said.
Russian cops have said raids on workplaces have not been connected to sending people to the front, and the Kremlin has dismissed the possibility of another mobilization.
It comes as support for Putin’s war flags, among mounting losses, reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies to be approaching half a million dead.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has brought the war to Russia with an extended drone blitz over the summer that has targeted key energy and logistics infrastructure in highly visible attacks.
The under-pressure president, 73, is also reported to be leaning more and more heavily on the FSB to keep control of the country.
It has sparked unease among Russia’s middle classes and elites, and has been coupled with a drift towards hardliners enjoying more influence with Putin, sources told Bloomberg.
