The Kremlin has reportedly resorted to offering cash bonuses and Russian passports to migrant workers from Central Asia to bolster its depleted ranks of soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Recruiters have approached potential recruits at migration offices, homes, and mosques to lure them into the Russian armed forces.
Russia hopes to recruit 400,000 more soldiers this year to fight in Ukraine. Still, tens of thousands of draft-age Russian men have fled the country following President Vladimir Putins February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As a result, Russia is struggling to ensure it has sufficient troops to fight off an expected counteroffensive from Kyiv.
Recruiters have been seen on Russian city streets passing out brochures offering potential recruits an initial one-time payment of more than $2,300, followed by salaries of up to $4,160 a month, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
RFE/RLs Tajik-language news service has a video that appears to show a Russian military recruiter giving a speech at a famous mosque in the city of Chelyabinsk, located in west-central Russia near the Ural mountains.
You dont have to wait five years to become Russian citizens. Instead, you can sign a contract for military service for six months or up to one year in exchange for fast-track citizenship for yourself and your families, a man in a military uniform tells the congregation in the mosque.
Another video shows a man in a Russian uniform promoting military service to a group of men, some of whom were speaking Uzbek. The recruiters tell them they dont have to take a mandatory medical check-up.
They only need to sign a paper saying, I am healthy, said Jurabek Amonov, a migrant rights advocate in Russia, in an interview with RFE/RL last month. I always tell the migrants that 99% of those who went to war in the hope of getting Russian passports were killed in Ukraine.
British officials have said that the high monthly salary and sign-on bonuses will likely entice some Central Asian migrant workers to sign up, despite the risks.
These recruits are likely sent to the Ukrainian frontlines where the casualty rate is extremely high, U.K. military intelligence officials said Monday in their latest assessment of the battlefield in Ukraine.
Authorities in Moscow are almost certainly seeking to delay any new mandatory mobilization effort for as long as possible to minimize domestic dissent.
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