For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a big payday. For criminals seeking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse in prison, it’s a chance at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, it’s a simplified path to citizenship.
All they have to do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.
This desperate recruitment drive is part of Moscow’s strategy to replenish its forces in the nearly four-year conflict, while simultaneously avoiding an unpopular nationwide mobilisation. The bloody war of attrition has also seen foreign combatants join the fray. Following a mutual defence treaty in 2024, North Korea reportedly sent thousands of soldiers to help Russia defend its Kursk region against a Ukrainian incursion.
Furthermore, men from South Asian countries, including India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, have reported being duped by recruiters who promised legitimate jobs, only to find themselves conscripted for combat. Officials in Kenya, South Africa, and Iraq have confirmed similar instances of their citizens being misled into fighting.
President Vladimir Putin told his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower figure – 617,000 – in December 2023. It’s unclear if those numbers are accurate.
Still hidden are the numbers of military casualties, with Moscow having released limited official figures. The British Defense Ministry said last summer that more than 1 million Russian troops may have been killed or wounded.
Independent Russian news site Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news reports, social media and government websites and collected the names of over 160,000 troops killed. More than 550 of those were foreigners from over two dozen countries.
Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization has been in place since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad call-up.
When a limited mobilization of 300,000 men was tried later that year, tens of thousands of people fled abroad. The effort stopped after a few weeks when the target was met, but a Putin decree left the door open for another call-up. It also made all military contracts effectively open-ended and barred soldiers from quitting service or being discharged, unless they reached certain age limits or were incapacitated by injuries.
Since then, Moscow has largely relied on what it describes as voluntary enlistment.
The flow of voluntary enlistees signing military contracts has remained strong, topping 400,000 last year, Putin said in December. It was not possible to independently verify the claim. Similar numbers were announced in 2024 and 2023.
Activists say these contracts often stipulate a fixed term of service, such as one year, leading some potential enlistees to believe the commitment is temporary. But contracts are automatically extended indefinitely, they say.
The government offers high pay and extensive benefits to enlistees. Regional authorities offer various enlistment bonuses, sometimes amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.
In the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, for example, an enlistee would get about $50,000 in various bonuses, according to the local government. That’s more than twice the average annual income in the region, where monthly salaries in the first 10 months of 2025 were reported to be just over $1,600.
