The Russian authorities paid to enlist and now they also pay to enlist others. A perverse incentive that has increased in recent months the cases of citizens being forcibly taken to sign a contract with the army. The Kremlin thus tries to avoid an unpopular open and massive mobilization, but covertly tightens the screws to cover the casualties that it fails to replace with volunteers in its offensive in Ukraine. The job of a recruiter has been very well paid for months. Their targets are people who are alone, have criminal records, are sick or are in debt, and who are forcibly taken to recruitment centers.
“It is not a widespread problem, but it happens regularly,” a source from the human rights organization Appeal to Conscience [Prizyv k sovesti] explains to this newspaper. In Russia, unlike Ukraine, there is currently no open mobilization. The alarm was raised in June, when a video recorded in the Penza region, about 550 kilometers east of Moscow, went viral, in which the wives of several men locked in a minibus tried to prevent the vehicle from leaving a recruiting center heading to war. According to relatives, they had all been forced to join the army against their will.
“Normal people stay at home at night,” a mother heard as an argument in August when she reported to the authorities that her son had been kidnapped from the street and coerced to march to the front.
Call to Conscience recorded “a sudden increase” in these incidents in July when 12 were recorded, and noted six more in mid-August in several regions of Siberia and the Caucasus, far from large cities. Another organization, Go to the Forest [Idite lesom], declared a foreign agent by the Kremlin, received 26 complaints in August, and Conscript School [Shkola prizyvnika] reports 11 complaints in the last two months.
A separate issue are the cases of young people who do mandatory military service and have been coerced to sign a professional contract, since by law they cannot be sent to combat if they are not regular soldiers. Go to the forest and Conscript School received 51 and 13 complaints of this type, respectively, in August.
The authorities have encouraged police, private recruiters, and even family members to push people to go to war. "At least 44 regions have implemented the bonus for recruiters for each new soldier hired. Payments range between 10,000 and 1,000,000 rubles [between 100 and 10,000 euros]," Timofei Vaskin, head of the legal department of the human rights organization Conscript School, explains to this newspaper.
"In almost all known cases, the victims are socially vulnerable people. This includes those who suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction, mental illness, the elderly, people who live alone, or have a criminal record or debt," adds Vaskin before explaining the two reasons for this selection: first, it is easier to coerce those who have fewer legal defense mechanisms; Second, they are easier to identify.
"Local authorities have all kinds of records: criminal records, people who presumably live alone and medical records. It is easy to verify people in debt in public court records. Recruiters can easily obtain or buy all this data," says the representative of Conscript School.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied twice this week that he plans a new forced mobilization. “There is no scenario that requires it, it is a disinformation attack by the enemy before the elections,” the Russian leader said this Thursday in Vladivostok. “It's shit,” he summarized two days before in the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
Russia has “more than 700,000 military personnel” deployed in Ukraine, according to Putin. These figures more or less coincide with the calculations of Russian and Western experts, such as Janis Kluge. According to Moscow, in addition to those mobilized, the army recruits about 400,000 soldiers on an annual contract from 2023, which compared to the current deployment suggests that the casualties have been and continue to be enormous. According to analysts, the pace of Russian recruitment has decreased this year while the front remains a chopper with around 20,000 casualties per month.
And as the war drags on, the pool of volunteers dries up and the Kremlin increases its pressure to enlist. Some people are missing, others remain hidden so as not to be brought to the front. NGOs bring several cases to the attention of this newspaper with extreme caution.
“My uncle, an ordinary old man, lived alone in a village in Penza,” said the relatives of a 62-year-old man about whom they have not heard anything since July 29. "He left home with fear and strong emotional stress. They took him to the city, we believe they forced him to sign a military service contract," they denounce.
Go to the Forest tells the case of a 19-year-old young man from the Rostov province. His relatives report that he went to an inspection by the Federal Penitentiary Service for an outstanding fine, and there he was arrested and handed over to the officers of a recruitment center. "There he saw how others were beaten and they threatened him with criminal charges. They promised him that he would assemble drones, but after signing the contract they took him to a unit in the Samara region where they told him that he would be a stormtrooper [Shturmovik]," says the NGO. The life expectancy of these troops, under drones, is usually short.
The same NGO is trying to locate a Russian citizen born in Ukraine who disappeared in August in Novorossiysk. His sister asked the organization for help when he was arrested. "The man was taken to the police station. There they beat him, they took his phone and, about ten hours later, they brought him a bag of drugs, supposedly his. They gave him the choice between a criminal case, which could lead to up to 20 years in prison, or a contract. The man signed," says Go to the Forest. His family tried to see him in jail on August 13, but the visit was canceled. His brother called him and told him that they were sending him to a military unit.
A source at the university in the Khanty-Mansi region, in central Siberia, told this newspaper that the rectors have asked professors to convince students to enlist. They recommend promising those furthest behind that they will be in drone units and “pass the course” if they go to the front for a year. However, they are regular contracts and can end up as stormtroopers. According to two sources in the government of Russian journalist Farida Rustamova, the administration has achieved a quota of 2% of students.
“Universities and colleges are actively campaigning for help, and threats of expulsion are common, but we haven't seen any physical coercion,” says Vaskin of Conscript School.
Companies have also been ordered to send their employees to war. The NGO shows another case. A woman asked them for help to get her stepfather, 61 years old and with serious health problems, out of the army. "They took him to Kazan at the beginning of August under the pretext of a business trip and from there to Sverdlovsk [several regions of central Russia]. The last time we spoke with him, on August 11, he was saying nonsense, like he was cleaning snow and mowing hay. Now we know that he was taken to a recruitment center," said the relative in statements shown to this newspaper.
The organization also tells of the case of a 30-year-old man who “was intoxicated and the police acted in connivance with the recruitment office.” He had no telephone and could not contact his relatives when he arrived at the place they had reserved for him. “They did not give him any documents, they only copied the information from his passport into the contract, indicating that he would be in charge of guarding some facilities,” he says.
Another target of recruiters is reservists. “They are being summoned more frequently, and in the offices they are pressured to accept a regular contract,” says a source from Call to Conscience. The Ministry of Defense issued an order in October 2025 allowing reservists to be called up to supposedly defend strategic installations inside Russia from Ukrainian drones. According to the General Staff, they would only be sent “to special groups [...] within their own regions.”
This newspaper has learned of the case of a Murmansk reservist who received a notification to verify his data at the recruiting office. The employee tried to convince him to sign a contract assuring that he would only be part of anti-drone defense units in the region “that are not military, they are reservists.” The man was promised a three-year contract, payments of between 200,000-250,000 rubles, about 2,500 euros per month, and the possibility of staying at home. In reality it was an ordinary contract and they could change his destination.
This NGO also tells of several cases of fathers and uncles who were detained on the street without papers and taken by the police directly to a recruitment center. The relatives only know that they were sent to war, but they do not receive any further answers. “If you are lucky, you will be able to identify him in two weeks,” relatives of a man from Ulyanovsk, on the Volga, were told.
