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“1/ The Russian authorities are expanding military recruitment to cover migrants, debtors, former mercenaries, private security guards, the unemployed, convicted criminals, ex-convicts and those under investigation for crimes.

2/ Important Stories reports that the continuing need for manpower has prompted the Russian government’s Office of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative to issue a plan to recruit socially vulnerable sections of society into the Russian army.

3/ The plan is set out in a letter to the administration of the Central Federal District, which covers Moscow and most of the western part of European Russia. It requires the CFD to provide weekly information on the region’s government bodies to recruit individuals for the army.

4/ Among the categories set out in an attached table are:

🔺 Reservists, including those demobilised in 2022 and 2023
🔺 Citizens subject to conscription
🔺 Persons under investigation for “crimes of minor or moderate gravity”
🔺 Current and ex-convicts
🔺 Former mercenaries

5/ 🔺 Debtors and bankrupt people
🔺 Unemployed people
🔺 People who have recently acquired Russian citizenship
🔺 Foreigners who have applied for Russian citizenship
🔺 Foreigners subject to expulsion or deportation

6/ 🔺 Employees of businesses which have made provision for them to sign a militray contract
🔺 Employees of private security companies (PSC) ;
🔺 Voluntary recruits

The table gives responsibility to various government departments for recruiting people from each category.

7/ Although signing a contract is meant to be voluntary – as opposed to mobilisation, which is compulsory – the Russian authorities have many ways of applying pressure, as Sergei Krivenko of the pressure group “Citizen. Army. Right” notes.

8/ “For example, migration legislation is very unclear and complex. People could come and submit documents, but nothing has been done to them yet. Or the deadlines were missed.”

9/ “And you can either expel this person, his family, or say that we will quickly register you, we will give citizenship to your family, and you will go to fight.”

10/ There have been many incidents previously of migrants being rounded up and coerced into joining the army. According to an military official in an army recruitment office, coercion is also taking place across a much wider swathe of society.

11/ He says that government officials are bringing in “people who are drunk, homeless people, people with obvious mental health issues, drug addicts who have just been released from prison. It feels like they are getting rid of a marginalised layer of society.”

12/ “They don’t care at all about the quality of the army. ‘They’ll be digging trenches,’ they say. They don’t care what will happen to the families [of the recruits] after they send them there, but they promise them mountains of gold, of course.”

13/ “There was one migrant who hardly even spoke Russian. When I ask them if they came voluntarily, they all say they did. Although I could see that the representative of the administration, who brought the man, was showing with his facial expressions that he should say that.”

14/ The government officials themselves are also under pressure to meet quotas, which has led to disputes between districts over who should be credited for bringing people to recruitment offices.

15/ “For example, a person lived in one district, they persuaded him there, they bring him here [to the military unit], and he turns out to have a residence permit of another district.”

16/ “A representative of that district starts to attack [another official]: ‘You stole a man from us!’ Some people cry outright that they will be fired if they fail to fulfil the plan, and they have mortgages and children.”

17/ “Or that if they don’t find people in time, they will have to give up their employees or go themselves.” As the military official notes, “When their career is on the line, they know how to work quickly.”

18/ “And in order to stay at their feeding trough, they are ready to push a lot of people into the firebox. These government officials are now in such fear and treat people [who are recruited for contracts] as a means of survival.”

19/ Krivenko comments that this recruitment activity is meant to contribute towards the target of 305,000 new contract soldiers set earlier this year by Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council.

20/ “One of the channels for replenishing the army is conscripts. While in the barracks, they are subjected to intense pressure. Many are deceived and a contract is signed for them.”

21/ “The second point is that people from private military companies and [Luhansk & Donetsk ‘People’s Republic’] formations were transferred under the control of the Ministry of Defence, and they were also forced to sign contracts.”

22/ A third channel is the recruitment of civilians, of whom Krivenko suggests around 50-70,000 have been recruited. The military official comments that about half have come voluntarily, while the other half have been brought in by government officials. /end”

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