On February 24, the war between Ukraine and Russia will enter its fourth year. Four years of deadly clashes, almost frozen front lines, and fallen soldiers. And if kyiv is encountering more and more difficulty recruiting to renew its workforce, the situation is just as complex for Russia. Or even more: its tactic aimed at pounding the front with waves of soldiers, very costly in terms of men, requires an almost permanent renewal of forces. And while the Kremlin refuses a broader unpopular general mobilization, all means are good to replace its personnel.
One population in particular represents a real recruitment bonanza for Vladimir Putin’s army: people targeted by the justice system. While since 2022, the sending of criminals to the front only concerned people convicted and sent to penal colonies, all in exchange for an amnesty, the conditions were largely broadened this year by new laws. From now on, all suspects arrested and detained, but not yet tried, are now informed that the charges against them will disappear if they were to engage on the front. THE New York Times takes the example of two men arrested for hiding 200 kilograms of cocaine in containers, and all charges were dropped after both joined an assault brigade on the front.
“You can kill people, rob a bank or commit any other crime, and then go to the front,” explains the New York Times Ruslan Leviev, a Russian military analyst, explained that Russian authorities “desperately need a large number of people” given the losses in the fighting.
But for Olga Romanova, head of the NGO defending prisoners’ rights Russia Behind Bars (Russia behind bars), this strategy turns out to be particularly dangerous. She explains to the American daily that the Russian state is currently breaking the link between crime and conviction, which could have disastrous long-term consequences on crime rates. Especially since everything encourages the authorities to develop this system: according to Olga Romanova, the police receive a bonus of 100 dollars for each suspect sent to the army, an amount rising to 500 dollars in Moscow. The activist thus asserts that nearly one in five suspects choose to join the army rather than follow the legal procedure to its conclusion; much less costly recruitment for Russia than having to offer bonuses and financial incentives to civilian populations to convince them to join the front.
War rather than prison
However, this recruitment technique is far from only affecting criminals whose guilt is beyond doubt, and who would escape prison by going to fight. Many innocent people are also targeted for arbitrary arrests, in the hope that they would prefer to go to the front lines rather than endure lengthy court proceedings or incarceration in inhumane conditions. Activist Olga Romanova takes the example of a former prosecutor and opposition activist, who preferred to sign a contract with the army rather than go to prison, believing that his chances of being killed in the fighting were weaker. “Russian prisons are one of the most horrible places in the world. The conditions are terrible. In general, people choose war because in prison you are nobody, you have no rights. In the war, we can at least do something, make decisions”, explains Olga Romanova to the New York Times.
Another example highlighted by the New York daily is none other than that of a former walking gold medalist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Andrey Perlov. The latter was arrested on charges of having embezzled nearly $30,000 from the football club he managed, without any proof having ever been provided. While he has been locked up in a penal colony in Siberia since March at the age of 62, and all his bank accounts have been frozen, the Russian authorities are pushing him to join the front by constantly delaying his detention. Her daughter explained to New York Times that he was thinking more and more about eventually joining the army, in order to allow his family to live properly again.
Targeted immigrant populations
Other audiences are targeted by Moscow to swell the ranks of its army. This is the case for politicians imprisoned for corruption and seeking to repair their honor – although many of them join ghost units intended for the elites to pretend to have gone to fight. People in debt are also encouraged by the Kremlin to join the army: a new law, which came into force on December 1, allows up to 10 million rubles of debt to be erased – the equivalent of a little more than 86,000 euros – and to suspend procedures against people agreeing to leave for the front.
Finally, Moscow also recruits a lot from immigration, particularly from the former Soviet bloc in Central Asia. THE New York Times reports that the Russian authorities regularly raid any place where they are likely to find large groups of immigrants who have recently obtained their Russian citizenship, whether train stations, warehouses or markets, in order to summon them to the office conscription room, register them for military service and take them away by force. All these people are destined to join the assault brigades of Putin’s army, and to serve as cannon fodder in this war whose end is still difficult to see.