Moscow appears to be adopting increasingly aggressive strategies to recruit fresh troops for its war of attrition in Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin looks to make up for heavy battlefield losses.
Men are reportedly being snatched off Russian streets and students offered significant financial incentives to join drone units as Moscow looks to avoid another forced mobilisation.
Local officials have been issued recruitment quotas by the Kremlin and Moscow’s defence ministry as it looks to meet this year’s 409,000 target, sources familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.
Russians are given referral bonuses for encouraging others to sign up while officials exploit knowledge of potential recruits’ debts and legal problems to pressure them into signing up, the FT adds.
It comes as Putin seeks to regain the initiative in Moscow’s stalling four-and-a-half year invasion, after Kyiv’s increased long-range attack capability has seen it inflict major damage on Russia’s energy industry.
open image in galleryThe Russian army has suffered 1.4 million casualties including 450,000 deaths since its invasion began in February 2022, according to data from the Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
According to Ukrainian estimates, Russian recruitment rates are not keeping up with casualty rates, with 222,500 troops lost – including 131,000 killed – but only 221,000 recruited so far in 2026.
“Year by year and month by month, it’s harder for the Russian army to find people,” Grigory Sverdlin, director of a charity helping Russian troops desert called Get Lost, told the FT.
“Putin is evidently putting off a new wave of mobilization, so the defence ministry has to put more pressure on all sorts of people to sign contracts.”
Human rights campaigners say police have raided workplaces and snatched people off the street to take them to military recruitment offices, where they were forced to sign contracts in several incidents in recent months.
Raids in Russian cities and towns like Penza, Kamenka and Kuznetsk saw men being rounded up by police officers and other military enlistment officials, it is claimed.
open image in gallery“In Penza, they’re taking everyone indiscriminately, stopping cars and public transport, rounding up men and taking them away to sign contracts. Raids are happening across the entire city,” one local resident told human rights group Idite Lesom, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
The raids have intensified since the authorities began “catching men” in January, a Penza resident told the Mobilizatsiya channel, according to the outlet.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that the Kremlin is preparing to carry out a “significant” wave of involuntary reserve call ups this autumn.
The Institute for the Study of War reports that Russia has been preparing conditions to conduct rolling partial reserve call-ups since October last year, and has passed bills to expand the pool of criminals who may be recruited.
Targeting sign ups from students also suggests that Moscow is keen to pour more skilled human resources into its drone forces which – like those of Ukraine – are playing an increasingly vital role in the war.
open image in galleryDrone operators typically work some distance from the front line, but they are regarded as high-value targets who are hunted down and killed if their positions are revealed.
Russia has denied that any kind of general mobilisation drive is on the agenda, and says it is not running short of recruits despite Ukrainian claims.
Similar recruitment tactics have been reported in Ukraine, where footage from October 2024 purportedly showed Ukrainian military recruitment officers raiding restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv in search of men not registered for conscription.
Officers positioned outside the doors of the capital city’s Palace of Sports were seen carrying out checks as people left a concert by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy on Friday night, local media and witnesses said.
Moscow has also sought to bring in thousands of foreign troops to help fight in its war. Zelensky said on Sunday that up to 50,000 North Koreans were set to be deployed on Russian territory.
It has used a network of online recruiters to deceptively “funnel thousands of Africans from nearly every country on the continent into the frontlines, according to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.
Cuba and Colombia have also been targeted by Moscow for recruitment to the Russian army, according to a report published in April by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).