Russia is resorting to increasingly drastic measures to find recruits. The list has grown: beyond coercing detainees and conscripts, Moscow is now pressuring businesses to supply contract soldiers while further raising enlistment payments.

Thread with all recent updates:
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Thanks to recent updates from
@CITeam_en and iStories, we’ve learned that In Russia’s Primorsky region, officials told local business leaders they must help recruit men for the front. Employers were instructed to pressure their staff into signing contracts or contribute money
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In Voronezh oblast, officials sharply raised the bonus for signing a contract with the Defense Ministry. Governor Alexander Gusev boosted the regional payout from 505,000 rubles to 2.1 million. With federal payments added, the total now stands at 2.5 million rubles (~$27,000)
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Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin shared a photo taken outside a military recruitment office in Dolgoprudny. A banner above the entrance advertises unusually generous contract payments of 6 million rubles - roughly $73,000.
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In 2024–2025, at least 33 conscripts were killed in fighting in the Kursk region, and hundreds were taken prisoner, with at least 300 later returned to Russia in exchanges. According to the
@hochuzhit_com
project, by April 2025 no fewer than 217 conscripts were KIA.
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A glaring example involves three conscripts - Viktor Baturin, Nikita Molochkov, and Nikita Borisov. In 2023, they tried to challenge their contracts in court, claiming their signatures were forged. The cases were dismissed, and all three were KIA on the frontlines.
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According to an iStories report, the flow of information on pressure against conscripts shows no signs of slowing. Alexey Tabalov, founder of the human rights group “School of the Conscript,” notes: “I assess the risk of being sent from regular service to the war as high.”
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Russia is also recruiting from the arrested, not just prisoners. In the Ulyanovsk region, 36 people were charged with drug dealing this year. Two-thirds avoided trial by signing contracts with the Defense Ministry and going to war - trading potential sentences for the war
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Taken together, these cases confirm our earlier assessments: Russia is struggling to attract enough voluntary sign-ups to meet frontline needs and is turning instead to coercion - targeting conscripts, newly arrested suspects, and vulnerable workers.
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Used sources:
https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-sept-30-oct-2-2025
https://sibreal.org/a/pogibli-uzhe-...ilis-iz-za-falshivyh-kontraktov/33236538.html
https://storage.googleapis.com/isto...per-ne-popast-na-srochnuyu-sluzhbu/index.html