Russian Army Recruitment Hangs Between Coercion and Deception

Executive Summary:

• The Russian government passed a law that enables the recruitment to the Russian Armed Forces of people under arrest and facing a criminal investigation, even prior to a court trial.
• Russia has experienced increasingly high losses in the last five months, driving demand for higher recruitment, while the supply of willing combatants has dwindled.
• Considering that hundreds of thousands of criminal trials occur in Russia every year, the new law has the potential to source contracted soldiers in excess of those recruited in regular conscription campaigns.

The Russian Armed Forces began another conscription campaign in October with a target of 130,000 drafted soldiers by the end of the year (The Moscow Times, September 30). This rate is significantly lower than the 150,000 soldiers conscripted in April–July earlier this year. The Russian military faced its highest rate of losses of the war in the period May–September 2024. The lack of manpower is becoming evident as the operation of Ukraine’s army in Russia’s Kursk oblast continues. Due to this, either extending the involvement of drafted Russian soldiers in combat (and consequently, the increased conscription plan) or another round of “partial mobilization” by the end of the year is to be expected. Neither of these two scenarios, however, has been realized yet. In their place the Kremlin has developed a third option: recruiting people under investigation or accused, even before their court trial. These people are almost as vulnerable as prisoners in this context, and they can be easily deceived and coerced into signing a military contract (RIA Novosti, September 25). As the long war continues, the Kremlin seeks to find new ways to fill their meat grinder with people that will cause the least amount of discontent within Russia.

Last Spring, an assessment of Russia’s manpower and restoration concluded that Russia needed to recruit 20,000–30,000 soldiers a month to replace its losses. This estimation, however, was based on the prediction that these losses would be at the same rate as at the beginning of the year. Russia was able to recruit 162,000–166,000 new soldiers in the first six months of the year, according to known data and expert calculations, meaning the actual rate of conscription ended up being 25,000–30,000 a month (Cepa.org, March 19; Istories.media, September 9; Budget.gov.ru, accessed October 10).

The problem Russia is facing currently is the increased rate of losses in May–September 2024 (Forbes.ua, June 14; The Kyiv Independent, October 4; DefenseNews.com, October 9). As a result, Russia needs to recruit more soldiers than before. The Kremlin’s ongoing race to get payments to the newly recruited soldiers, however, means that not too many volunteers are willing to sign contracts as the money promised has been delayed. Moreover, when Ukraine’s troops met hundreds of poorly trained drafted soldiers in Kursk oblast in August, it seemed as if the Kremlin was trying to avoid a new round of mobilization at any cost and did not have another option except using more and more of these draft soldiers on the battlefield as it has in previous conflicts, such as in Afghanistan and Chechnya (Publication.pravo.gov.ru, July 31; The Wall Street Journal, September 19; Kommersant, September 23; Belpressa.ru, October 7).

Moscow has not yet demonstrated that its bet on using drafted soldiers since August has been successful. On the one hand, the total number of drafted soldiers is slowly growing compared to the last few years, and an unknown share of them have signed contracts with the armed forces either at the beginning of military service or during their one-year term of service. The only recent data available shows that more than 4,000 soldiers were conscripted for the Baltic fleet in April–July 2023. Only 2,000, however, retired after their 12-month military service in summer 2024. This shows that up to 50 percent of former conscripted soldiers signed contracts. The proportions in this example cannot necessarily be extrapolated to other branches of the Russian Armed Forces, however, and especially not to the ground troops. The underlying facts hold true, however. Namely, that conscripting  more soldiers leads to a higher overall number of conscripts being converted into contract soldiers (Mil.ru, July 15, 2023; Mil.ru, April 22; Garant.ru, September 30):

Table 1: Total Official Number of Drafted Soldiers in the Russian Armed Forces (note: the actual number of drafted soldiers is lower because some of them sign contracts on their very first day of military service, and it is not clear whether or not the Ministry of Defense completely executes its planned conscription)

The current total number of drafted soldiers is just 6–8 percent higher than in January 2020. This increase does not even pretend to correlate with the 50 percent increase in the authorized military personnel ceiling—the number of personnel authorized for military service—in 2022–2024 (Publication.pravo.gov.ru, September 16).

Russian leadership, however, has found at least a temporary solution for its lack of manpower. It has done so without an immediate round of mobilization and without sending thousands of conscripts to the frontline. This solution is the recruitment of persons under investigation, which mirrors how more than 150,000 prisoners were recruited in 2022–2023, first to the Wagner Group and then to the Russian army (see EDM, October 31, 2023). According to interviews with Russian prisoners of war, the practice of using people under investigation on the battlefield appeared without any formal law as early as the beginning of 2024, but this practice was formally legalized on October 2 (Cepa.org, March 19; Publication.pravo.gov.ru, October 2; Youtube.com/dmytrokarpenko, accessed October 10).

Considering that there are hundreds of thousands of criminal trials in Russia every year, the new law has the potential to source contracted soldiers in excess of those recruited in regular conscription campaigns. Alongside sending disobedient soldiers from other branches of the armed forces, such as the navy, those under criminal investigation may for now allow the Kremlin to avoid conscription while continuing to draft soldiers (Pravo.ru, April 17).