With Russian Draft Evasion Running High, Moscow’s Military Recruiters Get Creative

Orphans. Cubans. Convicts. Central Asian migrant workers.These groups are targeted by Russian military recruiters to try to fill Russia’s trenches in Ukraine, while minimizing the impact on Moscow and St. Petersburg. One year ago this month, President Putin announced on national TV an emergency draft.Within weeks, a million men quietly left Russia. Since then, Russian draft boards have targeted marginalized groups.Orphans: By studying funeral data, journalist Anastasiya Zhvik identified at least 19 Russian orphans killed in combat in Ukraine. She believes this is the tip of an iceberg. In Soviet times, orphans proved to be reliable members of the secret police, the military, and the Communist Party. Ms. Zhvik wrote two weeks ago in Cherta, a Russian-language news magazine, that “orphans in state institutions from childhood are taught what to do, what to study, what to eat and drink and how to relax.” “Over time,” Ms. Zhvik added, “they become accustomed to listen to the authorities — and when television speaks about the need to go to the front, often they take this as an order. … All this makes graduates of children’s homes an ideal audience for Russian military propaganda.” Cubans: On Monday, Cuba’s foreign ministry announced that it is working to “dismantle a human trafficking organization” that was recruiting Cuban men to fight in the Russian army in Ukraine. The announcement came one day after Miami’s Telemundo Spanish-language network aired an interview with two Cuban 19-year-olds in Russia.One of the pair, Alex Vega, said they had been recruited to work construction in Russia for $2,200 a month and Russian citizenship. Yet after flying to Moscow from Havana, they were issued military gear and sent to a base at Luhansk, a region of Ukraine occupied by Russia.In the video interview, Mr. Vega said that other Cuban men had fallen for the trick. “There are dead Cubans, there are missing Cubans. And this is not going to end until the war is over,” he said. He estimated that many of the 200 men on his flight from Havana planned to join Russia’s army. “Our advice to Cubans is not to come here. This is the craziest thing. Crazy. Don’t do it,” he said.In June, a newspaper from Ryazan reported that “several” Cubans had enlisted in the Russian army, posting photos of Latin men signing documents. All summer long, a Facebook group called “Cubans in Moscow” has been offering one-year contracts with the Russian army. In June, the head of Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Álvaro López Miera, visited Moscow. He was received by his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Mr. Shoigu said Cuba is Russia’s “most important ally” in the Caribbean. Yet Cuba’s tight ties with Russia have been trumped by Havana’s long-standing stance against mercenaries, a word it often uses for Cuban activists in exile. “Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine,” the ministry said yesterday. “It is acting, and it will firmly act against those who within the national territory participate in any form of human trafficking for mercenarism or recruitment purposes.”Convicts: Here, Mr. Putin again takes a page from the Soviets. During World War II, the Red Army fielded 422,700 soldiers in “Shtrafbats,” or penal battalions. Very few survived. Last November, Mr. Putin signed a decree allowing people convicted of serious crimes, including drug trafficking and murder, to be mobilized into the Russian army. A now deceased mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, landed his helicopter in prison yards to personally recruit convicts for his Wagner group. As in World War II, Russian convict soldiers in Ukraine were pushed forward often with the sole goal of drawing fire from Ukrainians, disclosing their positions. As in the Russian civil war of 1918-20 and in World War II, Wagner used “barrier troops” to shoot soldiers who retreated.An estimated 20,000 of Prigozhin’s convict troops were killed in the battle of Bakhmut, the bloodiest battle so far. In February, Prigozhin announced that he had stopped recruiting prisoners. At that time Russia’s defense ministry took over recruiting of prisoners, a policy switch that contributed to Prigozhin launching his mutiny against the ministry in June.Central Asians: Faced with a population decline, Russia has imported about 9 million workers from Central Asia. This is the equivalent of about 12 percent of Russia’s force of 75 million citizens.Last Sunday, Britain’s defense ministry tweeted that the Russian military is offering Central Asian guest workers monthly salaries up $4,160 and a fast track to Russian citizenship to men who sign up to fight. The average monthly salary in Russia is about $500. The leaders of the five Central Asian countries that once were Soviet republics urge their citizens not to join Russia’s war against Ukraine.Increasing pressure on guest workers, Russian citizenship will only be granted to men who register for the draft. At St. Petersburg and other cities, police have rounded up workers with expired visas or work documents and have taken them to military recruiting stations, Radio Free Europe reports. This week. Russia’s Duma is to review a bill that would take Russian citizenship away from foreign-born men who do not register for the draft. Targeting neighboring countries where Russian is spoken widely, the Russian military is posting online recruiting advertisements in Armenia and Kazakhstan, offering $5,140 sign-up bonuses.The bottom line is that Russia is not expected to win its official goal, set last winter, of expanding its army by 30 percent. During the first 18 months of its war in Ukraine, Russia is believed to have suffered 50,000 dead. That is at least double the number of Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan during the 1980s. As the news filters back to Russian towns and cities, draft evasion can only be expected to grow.

With Russian Draft Evasion Running High, Moscow’s Military Recruiters Get Creative

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