For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a big payday. For criminals looking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse of prison, it’s a chance at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, it’s a streamlined path to citizenship.
All he has to do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.
As Russia tries to rebuild its forces after nearly four years of war — and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it is scrambling to find new troops to send to the battlefield.
Some come from abroad to fight in what has become a bloody war of attrition. After signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea sent thousands of troops to help Russia defend its Kursk region from a Ukrainian incursion.
Men in South Asian countries including India, Nepal and Bangladesh complain they are tricked into signing up to fight by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the same has happened to citizens in their countries.
Russian figures in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference last month that 700,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024 and a slightly lower figure – 617,000 – in December 2023. It is not clear whether these numbers are accurate.
The number of military casualties is still hidden, with Moscow having limited official data. The British Ministry of Defense said last summer that more than 1 million Russian soldiers may have been killed or injured.
Independent Russian news site Mediazona, along with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news, social media and government websites and gathered the names of more than 160,000 soldiers killed. More than 550 of them were foreigners from more than two dozen countries.
How Russia Gets New Soldiers
Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization have been in place since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad recall.
When a limited mobilization of 300,000 was attempted later that year, tens of thousands fled abroad. The effort stopped after a few weeks when the target was met, but a decree by Putin left the door open for a new call. It also made all military contracts effectively indefinite and prohibited soldiers from quitting or being discharged unless they reached certain age limits or were incapacitated by injury.
Since then, Moscow has relied heavily on what it describes as voluntary enlistment.
The flow of voluntary conscripts signing military contracts remained strong, surpassing 400,000 last year, Putin said in December. It was not possible to independently verify the claim. Similar figures were announced in 2024 and 2023.
Activists say these contracts often stipulate a fixed term of service, such as one year, leading some potential recruits to believe the commitment is temporary. But contracts are automatically extended indefinitely, they say.
INCENTIVES
The government provides high earners with extensive benefits. Regional authorities offer various sign-up bonuses, sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars.
In the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, for example, an enlisted man would receive 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 wages in the first 10 months of 2025 were reported to be just over $1,600.
There are also tax breaks, debt relief and other benefits.
Despite the Kremlin’s claims that it is based on voluntary enlistment, media reports and rights groups say that conscripts — men between the ages of 18 and 30 who are doing mandatory fixed-term military service and are exempt from being sent to Ukraine — are often coerced by their superiors into signing contracts that send them into combat.
Recruitment also extends to prisoners and those in pretrial detention centers, a practice led at the beginning of the war by the late mercenary chief Evgheni Prigojin and adopted by the Ministry of Defense. Laws now allow for the recruitment of both convicts and suspects in criminal cases.
Aiming at foreigners
Foreigners are also targets for recruitment, both inside Russia and abroad.
Laws have been passed providing expedited Russian citizenship for conscripts. Media and activists in Russia also report that raids in areas where migrants live or work usually lead to pressure on them for military service, with new citizens sent to conscription offices to determine their eligibility for mandatory service.
In November, Putin decreed that military service is mandatory for certain foreigners seeking permanent residency.
Some are reportedly lured to Russia by trafficking networks who promise jobs, then trick them into signing military contracts. Cuban authorities in 2023 identified and sought to dismantle one such ring operating out of Russia.
Nepal’s foreign minister, Narayan Prakash Saud, told The Associated Press in 2024 that his country had asked Russia to return hundreds of Nepalese nationals who had been recruited to fight in Ukraine, as well as repatriate the remains of those killed in the war. Since then, Nepal has banned citizens from traveling to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts.
Also in 2024, India’s federal investigative agency said it had busted a network that lured at least 35 of its nationals to Russia under the guise of employment. The men were trained for combat and deployed to Ukraine against their will, with some being “severely injured,” the agency said.
When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, New Delhi said its citizens who had been “misled” into joining the Russian military would be released.
Iraqi officials say about 5,000 of its citizens have joined the Russian military along with an unspecified number fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Officials in Baghdad have cracked down on such recruitment networks, with one man convicted last year of human trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.
An unknown number of Iraqis were killed or missing during the fighting in Ukraine. Some families reported that relatives were lured to Russia under false pretenses and forced to enlist; in other cases, Iraqis joined voluntarily for pay and Russian citizenship.
Foreigners tricked into fighting are particularly vulnerable because they don’t speak Russian, have no military experience and are considered “expendable, to put it bluntly” by military commanders, said Anton Gorbachevitch of the activist group Idite Lesom, or “Get Lost,” which helps men defect from the army.
A drain on a slowing economy
This month, a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war agency said more than 18,000 foreign nationals had fought or were fighting on the Russian side. Nearly 3,400 have been killed, and hundreds of citizens from 40 countries are held in Ukraine as prisoners of war.
If true, that represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops Putin has said are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Using foreigners is just one way to meet steady demand, said Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department at the Conscientious Objectors Movement, noting that recruitment efforts in Russia appear to be steady. Most of those seeking help from the group, which helps men avoid military service, are Russian citizens, he said.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia researcher at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, said the Kremlin had become more “creative” in the past two years in attracting recruits, including foreigners.
But recruiting efforts are becoming “extremely expensive” for Russia, which is facing a slowing economy, she added.
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Associated Press writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed.