Officials in the regions increasingly actively recruit contract workers into the army

Officials in a number of Russian regions have recently been making calls more and more often to sign contracts with the army and send volunteers to the war in Ukraine. According to the edition “Govorit NeMoskva”, many of them say that the regional authorities are not coping with the plan to recruit contractors. According to them, this threatens a new wave of mobilization, which will become “total”.

As Govorit NeMoskva writes, the flow of messages about how regional authorities are trying to recruit volunteers “remained relatively flat in June and July, but increased sharply in August.”

In particular, the governor of Voronezh, Alexander Gusev promised 120 thousand rubles to each conscript soldier who serves in his region and will sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense by the end of the year, in Bratsk the guardianship authorities sent messages to the orphans that the participants in the war would be able to receive free (as required by law) before others apartment from the state, in Volgograd, leaflets advertising contract service are distributed in Uzbek language on buses, promising money and Russian citizenship, and in a number of regions, including St. Petersburg, the police are now detaining Russian citizens and military enlistment offices take them, where they are registered and also offer to conclude a contract.

The publication also cites the words of officials from a number of regions who talk about the existence of a plan to recruit volunteers. “If we don’t level the situation within a month or two, there will be a second wave (mobilization),” Yuriy Bashkyrov, the head of the district administration, said in particular in Tolyatta. According to him, a plan of two thousand volunteers was launched in the city, but by the end of August it turned out to be a little more than 250 people. The same messages came from the Novosibirsk and Irkutsk regions, Buryatia, Bashkortostan, and Tatarstan. The Vice Mayor of Vladivostok, Yevgeny Bavin, reportedly spoke at a meeting with the heads of management companies and HOAs in July about the need to implement the draft plan by December. It was suggested that loan debtors, ex-prisoners, and foreigners be persuaded to join the army. “If we do not fulfill this task, everything will go in a forced order… Because the mobilization will take place already according to the second scenario: martial law will be introduced, the checkpoint, everything will be closed, and then everything will go, from small to large,” Bavin said. “Govorit NeMoskva” claims that the audio recording of the meeting was provided to the publication by a reader.

The day before, the military intelligence of the British Ministry of Defense noted that the Russian authorities are trying to recruit citizens of neighboring countries to participate in the war in Ukraine.

• The so-called partial mobilization was announced in Russia last September. According to official data, more than 300 thousand people were called. Currently, there is no active call for mobilization, but the decree about it has not been canceled. Commentators argue about whether there will be a new wave of mobilization in Russia – some argue that it cannot be avoided due to losses at the front, others believe that the Russian authorities are trying to do without mobilization at the expense of recruiting foreigners, prisoners, increasing payments to volunteers, “hidden “mobilization through state corporations.
• Legislation on evasion of the call for mobilization has recently been seriously tightened.