For average wage earners in Russia, it’s a big payday. For criminals seeking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse in prison, it is an opportunity for freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, it’s a simple path to citizenship.
They must sign an agreement to fight in Ukraine.
As Russia tries to enlist its troops in the nearly four-year war — and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization — it is pulling out all the stops to find new troops to send to the battlefield.
Some have come from abroad to fight in what has turned into a bloody war. After signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea sent thousands of troops to help Russia defend its Kursk region from Ukrainian aggression.
Men from South Asian countries including India, Nepal and Bangladesh have complained of being duped into signing up by recruiters with promises of employment. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the same has happened to their own citizens.
Russian numbers in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops were fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower number – 617,000 – in December 2023. It’s unclear if those numbers are accurate.
Military casualties are still under wraps, with Moscow releasing limited official figures. The British Ministry of Defense said last summer that more than a million Russian troops had been killed or wounded.
The independent Russian news site Mediazona, along with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news reports, social media and government websites to collect the names of 160,000 soldiers killed. More than 550 of them were foreigners from two dozen countries.
How Russia Gets New Soldiers
Unlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization have been in place since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Putin has resisted a broader call-up order.
A limited mobilization attempt of 300,000 men later that year resulted in thousands fleeing abroad. The effort was halted after a few weeks when the goal was met, but Putin’s order left the door open for another call-up. It effectively made all military contracts open-ended and prevented soldiers from leaving the service or being discharged, unless they reached a certain age limit or were disabled by injury.
Since then, Moscow has largely relied on what it describes as voluntary admissions.
The flow of voluntary enlistees to sign the military agreement has remained strong, up 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 specify a fixed period of service, such as one year, leading some potential enlistees to believe the commitment is temporary. But contracts are automatically extended indefinitely, they say.
incentives
The government provides high pay and comprehensive benefits to the enlisted. Regional officials offer various enlistment bonuses, sometimes amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.
For example, in the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, according to the local government, an enlisted person will receive $50,000 in various bonuses. That’s more than double the median annual income in the region, where monthly wages were reported to exceed $1,600 in the first 10 months of 2025.
There are also tax exemptions, loan relief and other benefits.
Despite the Kremlin’s claim that it relies on voluntary conscription, media reports and rights groups say that conscripts – men aged 18-30 perform fixed-term mandatory military service and are exempt from being sent to Ukraine – are often forced by their superiors to sign contracts sending them to war.
Conscription also extends to prisoners and pretrial detention centers, a practice pioneered by the late mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin at the start of the war and adopted by the Ministry of Defense. The law now allows both accused and suspects to be recruited in criminal cases.
Targeting foreigners
Foreigners are also recruiting targets both inside Russia and abroad.
Laws were adopted offering expedited Russian citizenship for those enlisted. Russian media and activists also report that migrants are pressured into military service during raids in areas where they usually live or work, sending new citizens to recruitment offices to determine whether they are eligible for mandatory service.
In November, Putin ordered military service mandatory for certain foreigners seeking permanent residency.
Some were reportedly lured to Russia with promises of jobs and tricked into signing military contracts. In 2023 Cuban authorities identified and sought to dismantle one such ring operating from Russia.
Nepal’s foreign minister, Narayan Prakash Saud, told The Associated Press in 2024 that his country had asked Russia to return hundreds of Nepali citizens recruited to fight in Ukraine and to return the remains of those killed in the war. Nepal has banned citizens from traveling to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts.
Even in 2024, India’s Federal Investigation Agency said it had busted a network of smuggling at least 35 citizens to Russia on the pretext of employment. The agency said the men had been trained for combat and deployed to Ukraine against their will, with some being “severely injured”.
When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, New Delhi said it would exempt its citizens who were “delusional” to join the Russian army.
Iraqi officials say about 5,000 of its citizens have joined Russian forces and a certain number are fighting Ukrainian forces. Authorities in Baghdad have cracked down on such recruitment networks, with one man convicted and sentenced to life in prison last year for human trafficking.
An unknown number of Iraqis have been killed or disappeared during the fighting in Ukraine. Some families have reported that relatives were lured to Russia under false pretenses and forced to enlist; In other cases, Iraqis have joined voluntarily for pay and Russian citizenship.
Foreigners caught up in the fighting are particularly vulnerable because they don’t speak Russian, have no military experience and are considered “unquestionable” by military commanders, said Anton Gorbatsevich of the activist group Idite Lesom, or “Get Lost,” which helps people leave the military.
A drain on a sluggish economy
This month, the Ukrainian Agency for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said 18,000 foreign nationals had fought or were fighting on the Russian side. About 3,400 have been killed, and hundreds of citizens of 40 countries are being held as gunmen in Ukraine.
If true, that represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops that Putin has fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
Using foreigners is the only way to meet continued demand, said Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department of the Movement for Honest Goods, pointing out that Russian recruitment efforts are steady. Most of those seeking help from the group, which helps men avoid military service, are Russian citizens, he said.
Katerina 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 faces a slowing economy, he added.
–
Associated Press writers Gerald Imre in Cape Town, South Africa, and Qasim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed.
