The news for Russian President Vladimir Putin related to the recruitment of new soldiers is very bad, writes the independent Russian media Idel.Realii, quoted by Focus.de.
The Russian army has long been luring new soldiers with money, but even with increased payments, the replenishment of the army has stalled. This is becoming a serious problem for Vladimir Putin, who in 2022 launched a full-scale war against Ukraine.
Russia is no longer able to significantly increase the number of new volunteers, although in some regions large sums of money are already being paid to new volunteers. As Idel.Realii reports, citing employees of recruitment agencies, even the highest financial incentives are no longer helping to recruit more soldiers for the war in Ukraine. One interviewee said that anyone who wanted to “make money through the war” may have already signed up.
For example, in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, they pay 3.2 million rubles (about 34,000 euros) to new volunteers, but even that has not helped much.
According to a source in the Irkutsk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense recently tried to attract new soldiers with an advertising campaign. The campaign was broadcast before the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska. The message was that the war is about to end. “Make your millions before peace comes“.
But according to local officials, Irkutsk has long struggled to find new soldiers. And those who do arrive are often “very old“ or chronically ill.
The decline in mobilization could force President Putin to choose between two unpopular alternatives: either mobilize a reserve of non-volunteers or sit down at the negotiating table to end the war, experts from the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe.
Russia has suffered a huge number of casualties in the war against Ukraine and, despite having much greater resources (military and manpower) than Ukraine, has failed to make a breakthrough on the front.