‘No patriotism to be found there’

Russia planned to recruit 400,000 volunteer soldiers to the war by the end of the year. But the campaign doesn’t seem to be going so well

In March, Bloomberg reported that the Russian authorities were planning to recruit 400,000 volunteers to serve in the army by the end of 2023. Novaya-Europe looks into whether they were able to make it happen and how many newcomers joined the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces.

All hands on deck

Pro-government media reported back in May that Russia was rolling out a full-scale recruitment campaign for contract servicemen starting April 1. The target was to recruit 400,000 professional soldiers by the end of the year.

Not long before that, in December 2022, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke at a ministry meeting, saying that there was a growing threat coming from NATO, and proposed to increase the army’s personnel from 1.15 million to 1.5 million servicemen. Furthermore, 695,000 of them had to be contract servicemen. Shoigu also announced that the goal was to increase the number of professional soldiers from 400,000 to 521,000 by the end of 2023.

Vladimir Putin spoke about the necessity of establishing a professional army on multiple occasions as well.

In May 2022, the Russian president annulled the age restrictions on signing a contract with the Defence Ministry. The cut-off used to be 40 years for Russian nationals and 30 for foreigners.

Pro-government media previously reported that former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council, was personally supervising the contract servicemen recruitment campaign. According to several sources, there were quotas that the regions had to reach. For example, the Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk regions had to get 10,000 contracts signed by the end of the year.

As per media outlet SOTA, at the end of March 2023, the Moscow government was tasked with finding 27,000 contract servicemen for the war in Ukraine.

“The rate of recruitment of contract servicemen for Russia’s Armed Forces has increased up to 1,400 people per day, last week over 10,000 people signed contracts,” Medvedev said on 4 July 2023 during a Security Council meeting. “The armed rebellion attempt had no impact on the citizens’ view of contract service in the special military operation zone.”

Medvedev also said that, according to the Defence Ministry data, over 185,000 people joined the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces between 1 January and 4 July 2023. Around 109,000 of them are reserve servicemen.

“The numbers quoted by Medvedev — these aren’t volunteers that went to draft offices of their own accord,” an officer from one of Russian regional volunteer battalions tells us on condition of anonymity. After the 10 June order from Shoigu to get all volunteers and mercenaries to sign a contract with the Defence Ministry before 1 July, some reserve units and other detachments had to “fall in line” and officially join the Defence Ministry, he says.

Out of around 20 reserve detachments currently engaged in warfare, about half has already signed the contract with the ministry, the source adds.

It has to be noted that volunteers were actively recruited last year, too. Most often, they were deployed to regional battalions or volunteer detachments under three- or six-month-long contracts.

Before the volunteer units were created, all volunteers had gone to Ukraine through the Russian Special Forces University located in Chechnya’s Gudermes. Only about a third of the people undergoing training there are Chechen. The rest are Russians, Kalmyks, Buryats. They’re a part of the Akhmad Kadyrov Regiment — they fight together, serve there, but they are not officially listed as part of the regiment’s personnel.

Novaya-Europe’s source within the command of one of the detachments says that currently there are 20 volunteer detachments in Ukraine — 12 battalions, 400-500 people each, and another 8 units, 150-250 fighters each.

“When it comes to regional units, all heads of the regions were ordered to gather a battalion each last summer,” the source says.

Per Novaya-Europe’s estimates, regional volunteer battalions could have delivered between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers to the front line in 2022.

Clearly utopian

“It quickly became evident that rounding up 400,000 soldiers, the number mentioned back in February, was a clearly utopian goal. Then a decision was made to try and find at least 150,000 volunteers who’d sign a contract. That was the number indicated in the ‘hidden mobilisation’ plan,” special correspondent for BBC News Russian Ilya Barabanov tells Novaya-Europe. “It seems that the task was to recruit up to 50% of the number of people drafted last autumn, (300,000) — in case of big losses at the front. As far as we know, the only regions to meet the quota or even exceed it were the poorest ones. While the wealthy ones, for example the capitals, failed to reach the target. To remedy the situation, fighters from regional battalions, various volunteer detachments, and other semi-volunteer units were made to sign contracts.”

According to Ilya Barabanov, dozens of thousands of contract servicemen who chose to go to the army following a wide-spread advertisement campaign are, likely, currently engaged in fighting at the front and holding the line, thus compensating the significant losses suffered by regular troops.

However, he is sceptical about the combat capability of the volunteer detachments. According to Ilya Barabanov, reserve officers who haven’t had anything to do with the army in a long time often become the commanders of these types of units.

Per his information, the 40th corps that is being formed in the Stavropol region at the moment will be made up of recruited convicts, servicemen brought back in POW exchanges, and, likely, volunteers who signed a contract.

Zero patriotism

“There are three ways to end up in the Russian army: conscription, mobilisation, and signing a contract voluntarily,” head of the human rights group Citizen. Army. Law Sergey Krivenko explains. “This year, it’s those who volunteer for contract service who are the foundation of recruitment. Most often, these are people from small towns and villages trying to solve their financial difficulties. As a rule, there’s no patriotism to be found there.”

According to the expert, several regional battalions signed contracts not directly with the Defence Ministry but with an affiliated company. There are still disputes on whether the fighters of these detachments are considered servicemen and whether they have the right to full payouts in case of injury or death.

“There’s no data on the number of people who willingly signed contracts with the Defence Ministry after falling for the advertisements or the promise of a big paycheck,” Sergey Krivenko says. “At the beginning of the year, the plan was to recruit 400,000 soldiers. Recently, a ministry source said that as of now 113,000 people had been recruited. But whether this number includes conscripts who signed contacts or only the people [who voluntarily signed contacts] is unclear.”

The expert believes that only around 40,000-50,000 actual volunteers have been recruited in 2023.

“Many of them have already started to realise that a contract with the Defence Ministry is a trap,” he continues. “Because it can’t be terminated until Putin signs an order putting an end to mobilisation. Contract servicemen are being recruited to compensate for the war losses. The last public order signed by Putin pushed up the size of the armed forces to 1.2 million [personnel].” The human rights defender says it’s obvious that the number of those willing to serve is not big. The hotline of his organisation doesn’t receive many calls from the relatives of contract servicemen.

During recruitment, the volunteers are promised big paychecks. In practice, those who signed contracts aren’t always satisfied with the money earned. A volunteer who is participating in hostilities can earn up to 200,000 rubles (€1,985) per month. But sometimes they get less money, if not all of their days of service are counted as combat days (there’s a bonus payment for each combat day).

“Before, a person usually went to serve in a volunteer unit with a familiar commander, certain that they’d be surrounded by comrades-in-arms; now, when you sign a contract with the Defence Ministry, you don’t know in what unit and under whose command you will end up in,” the officer from one of Russian regional volunteer battalions says. “Furthermore, you can end up under the command of a complete idiot. And there’s no way to terminate the contract. They aren’t allowed to go home. I don’t think experienced servicemen that are currently fighting in the volunteer battalions are looking at that very optimistically. But most of them don’t have a choice — they will still sign up for slavery in the volunteer army.”

If the losses at the front line are high, then the government might go back to its mobilisation plan, the officer concludes.