More than 230,000 people have enlisted in the Russian army since the beginning of the year, former President Dmitry Medvedev announced Thursday, in the 18th month of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. In addition to their pay and benefits, new recruits see their civilian jobs “preserved during the period of service”.
More than 230,000 people have enlisted in the Russian army since the beginning of the year, former President Dmitry Medvedev announced Thursday, in the 18th month of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. “From January 1 to August 3 (…), more than 231,000 people were accepted under contract,” he said during a meeting broadcast on television. The former Russian president, who is currently deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, had previously announced in May that the army had recruited 120,000 people at the time.
According to him, the “task remains to make the contractual service as prestigious as possible”, while the Russian army needs recruits to carry out its offensive in Ukraine. He did not specify what training period these recruits need before joining the units on the front, engaged since the beginning of June to repel the Ukrainian counter-offensive in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Via social networks and posters in the street
The recruitment campaign is done via social networks and multiple posters in the streets, promoting the army and promising particularly attractive conditions to future soldiers. In addition to their pay and benefits, new recruits see their civilian jobs “preserved during the period of service” and any bank credits frozen, according to Dmitry Medvedev.
In September 2022, the Russian authorities had to resort, faced with the losses on the front, to a partial mobilization of reservists, which had made it possible to recruit at least 300,000 men but which had also caused the flight of tens of thousands of Russians to the foreign. At the end of December 2022, the Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu had deemed it “necessary” to increase the number of the Russian army to 1.5 million soldiers – “including 695,000 under contract” -, i.e. more than the objective of 1.15 million set by Vladimir Putin in August.