For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a big payday. For criminals looking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse in prison, it is a chance for freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, it is a simplified path to citizenship.
All they have to do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.
As Russia seeks to replenish its forces nearly four years into the war — and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it is pulling out all the stops to find new troops to send into the battlefield.
Some come from abroad to fight in what has become a bloody war of attrition. After signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea has sent thousands of troops to help Russia defend its Kursk region from an incursion from Ukraine.
Men from South Asian countries, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, complain they were tricked into signing up to fight by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq said the same thing happened to citizens from their countries.
Russian numbers in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin said at his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower figure – 617,000 – in December 2023. It is not clear if those numbers are accurate.
The number of military casualties remains under wraps, with Moscow releasing limited official figures. The British Ministry of Defense said last summer that more than a million Russian troops may have been killed or injured.
Independent Russian news site Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, have scoured news reports, social media and government websites and collected the names of more than 160,000 soldiers who were killed. More than 550 of these were foreigners from more than two dozen countries.
How Russia gets new soldiers
Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and national mobilization have been in place since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad recall.
When a limited mobilization of 300,000 men was attempted later that year, tens of thousands of people fled abroad. The effort stopped after a few weeks when the target was reached, but Putin’s decree left the door open for another call. It also made all military contracts effectively open and prohibited soldiers from quitting the service or being fired, unless they reached certain age limits or were incapacitated due to injuries.
Since then, Moscow has relied heavily on what it describes as voluntary engagement.
The flow of voluntary enlistees signing military contracts remained strong, reaching 400,000 last year, Putin said in December. It was not possible to independently verify the claim. Similar numbers were announced in 2024 and 2023.
Activists say these contracts often stipulate a fixed term of service, such as one year, leading some potential recruits to believe the commitment is temporary. But contracts are automatically extended indefinitely, they say.
The incentives
The government offers high pay and extensive benefits to enlistees. Regional authorities offer various recruitment bonuses, sometimes amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.
In the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, for example, an enlistee gets about $50,000 in various bonuses, according to the local government. This is more than double the average annual income in the region, where monthly salaries in the first 10 months of 2025 were reported to be just over $1,600.
There are also tax breaks, debt relief and other advantages.
Despite the Kremlin’s claims that they rely on voluntary enlistment, media reports and rights groups say that men — men between the ages of 18 and 30 who perform mandatory military service for a fixed period and are exempt from being sent to Ukraine — are often forced by their superiors to sign contracts that send them into battle.
Recruitment also extends to prisoners and those in pre-trial detention centres, a practice pioneered early in the war by the late mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and adopted by the Ministry of Defence. The laws now allow the recruitment of both convicts and suspects in criminal cases.
It targets foreigners
Foreigners are also recruiting targets, both inside Russia and abroad.
Laws were adopted offering accelerated Russian citizenship for enlistees. Russian media and activists also report that raids in areas where migrants typically live or work lead to pressure on military service, with new citizens sent to recruitment offices to determine whether they are eligible for mandatory service.
In November, Putin decreed that military service was mandatory for certain foreigners seeking permanent residency.
Some are reportedly lured to Russia by trafficking rings who promise jobs, then trick them into signing military contracts. Cuban authorities in 2023 identified and attempted to dismantle one such ring operating from Russia.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nepal, Narayan Prakash Saud, told The Associated Press in 2024 that his country asked Russia to return hundreds of Nepali citizens who were recruited to fight in Ukraine, as well as to repatriate the remains of those killed in the war. Nepal has since banned citizens from traveling to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts.
Also in 2024, India’s federal investigation agency said it broke a network that lured at least 35 of its citizens to Russia under the guise of employment. The men were trained for combat and deployed to Ukraine against their will, with some “seriously wounded,” the agency said.
When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, New Delhi said its citizens who had been “tricked” into joining the Russian army would be discharged.
Iraqi officials say around 5,000 of its citizens have joined the Russian military along with an unspecified number fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Officials in Baghdad set up such recruitment networks, with one man convicted of human trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.
An unknown number of Iraqis have been killed or disappeared while fighting in Ukraine. Some families reported that relatives were lured to Russia under false pretenses and forced to enlist; in other cases, Iraqis joined voluntarily for Russian salary and citizenship.
Foreigners caught up in the fighting are especially vulnerable because they don’t speak Russian, have no military experience and are considered “dispensable, to put it bluntly,” by military commanders, said Anton Gorbatsevich of the activist group Idite Lesom, or “Get Lost,” which helps men desert from the army.
A drain on a declining economy
This month, a Ukrainian agency for the treatment of prisoners of war said that more than 18,000 foreign nationals have fought or are fighting on the Russian side. Almost 3,400 have been killed, and hundreds of citizens of 40 countries are held in Ukraine as prisoners of war.
If true, this represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops Putin has said are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
The use of foreigners is only one way to meet the constant demand, said Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department at the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, noting that Russian recruitment efforts appear to be stable. He said that most of those seeking help from the group, which assists men to avoid military service, are Russian citizens.
Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia researcher at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said the Kremlin has become more “creative” in the past two years in attracting enlistees, including foreigners.
But recruitment efforts are becoming “extremely expensive” for Russia, which is facing a shrinking economy, she added.
—
Associated Press writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed.