For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a giant payday. For criminals in search of to flee the tough conditions and abuse in prison, it’s a likelihood at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a greater life, it’s a simplified path to citizenship.
All they should do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.
As Russia seeks to replenish its forces in nearly 4 years of war — and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it’s pulling out all of the stops to seek out latest troops to send into the battlefield.
Some come from abroad to fight in what has change into a bloody war of attrition. After signing a mutual defence treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea sent hundreds of soldiers to assist Russia defend its Kursk region from a Ukrainian incursion.
Men from South Asian countries, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, complain of being duped into signing as much as fight by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the identical has happened to residents from their countries.
Russian numbers in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin told his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the identical number in 2024, and a rather 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 greater than 1 million Russian troops can have been killed or wounded.
Independent Russian news site Mediazona, along with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news reports, social media and government web sites and picked up the names of over 160,000 troops killed. Greater than 550 of those were foreigners from over two dozen countries.
How Russia gets latest soldiers
Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization has been in place for the reason that 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 yr, tens of hundreds of individuals fled abroad. The trouble stopped after just a few weeks when the goal was met, but a Putin decree left the door open for one more 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.
Get every day National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
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 yr, Putin said in December. It was impossible to independently confirm the claim. Similar numbers were announced in 2024 and 2023.
Activists say these contracts often stipulate a set term of service, reminiscent of one yr, leading some potential enlistees to imagine the commitment is temporary. But contracts are mechanically prolonged indefinitely, they are saying.
The federal government offers high pay and extensive advantages to enlistees. Regional authorities offer various enlistment bonuses, sometimes amounting to tens of hundreds of dollars.
Within the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, for instance, an enlistee would get about $50,000 in various bonuses, in keeping with the local government. That’s greater than twice the common annual income within the region, where monthly salaries in the primary 10 months of 2025 were reported to be just over $1,600.
There are also tax breaks, debt relief and other perks.
Despite Kremlin claims of counting on voluntary enlistment, media reports and rights groups say conscripts — men aged 18-30 performing fixed-term mandatory military service and exempted from being sent to Ukraine — are sometimes coerced by superiors into signing contracts that send them into battle.
Recruitment also extends to prisoners and people in pretrial detention centers, a practice led early within the war by the late mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and adopted by the Defense Ministry. Laws now allow recruitment of each convicts and suspects in criminal cases.
Foreigners are also recruiting targets, each inside Russia and abroad.
Laws were adopted offering accelerated Russian citizenship for enlistees. Russian media and activists also report that raids in areas where migrants typically live or work result in them being pressuring into military service, with latest residents sent to enlistment offices to find out in the event that they’re eligible for mandatory service.
In November, Putin decreed that military service was mandatory for certain foreigners in search of everlasting residency.
Some reportedly are lured to Russia by trafficking rings promising jobs, then duping them into signing military contracts. Cuban authorities in 2023 identified and sought to dismantle one such ring operating from Russia.
Maksudur Rahman, 31, who escaped after fighting for the Russian army, shows a Russian military dog tag during an interview with The Associated Press in Lakshmipur, Bangladesh, Dec. 10, 2025.
(AP Photo/Rajib Dhar)
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud told The Associated Press in 2024 that his country asked Russia to return lots of of Nepali nationals who were recruited to fight in Ukraine, in addition to to repatriate the stays of those killed within the war. Nepal has since barred residents from traveling to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts.
Also in 2024, India’s federal investigation agency said it broke up a network that lured a minimum of 35 of its residents to Russia under the pretext of employment. The boys were trained for combat and deployed to Ukraine against their will, with some “grievously injured,” the agency said.
When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, Latest Delhi said its nationals who were “misled” into joining the Russian army can be discharged.
Iraqi officials say about 5,000 of its residents have joined the Russian military together with an unspecified number who’re fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Officials in Baghdad cracked down on such recruiting networks, with one man convicted last yr of human trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.
An unknown variety of Iraqis have been killed or gone missing while fighting in Ukraine. Some families have reported that relatives were lured to Russia under false pretenses and compelled to enlist; in other cases, Iraqis have joined voluntarily for the salary and Russian citizenship.
Foreigners duped into fighting are especially vulnerable because they don’t speak Russian, haven’t any military experience and are deemed “dispensable, to place it bluntly,” by military commanders, said Anton Gorbatsevich of the activist group Idite Lesom, or “Get Lost,” which helps men desert from the military.
A drain on a slowing economy
This month, a Ukrainian agency for the treatment of prisoners of war said over 18,000 foreign nationals had fought or are fighting on the Russian side. Almost 3,400 have been killed, and lots of of residents of 40 countries are held in Ukraine as POWs.
If true, that represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops that Putin said are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Using foreigners is just one strategy to meet the constant demand, said Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department on the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, noting Russian recruitment efforts look like stable. Most of those in search of help from the group, which assists men in avoiding military service, are Russian residents, he said.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia researcher on the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said the Kremlin has gotten more “creative” within the last two years with attracting enlistees, including foreigners.
But recruitment efforts have gotten “extremely expensive” for Russia, which faces a slowing economy, she added.