Contracts as blood trade
The Russian authorities say that there is no shortage of people willing to sign a contract for military service. Regional publications come out with similar and reprinted articles from each other that there are almost queues in the military registration and enlistment offices. Then, such articles usually describe the financial conditions of the service, and at the end, telephone numbers and addresses of local military registration and enlistment offices are necessarily given. In general, the blood trade in Russia in 2023 is going on, as in Switzerland somewhere in the 15th century. This trade needs advertising, and the "buyers" here have a powerful information and administrative resource.
The first contracts can now be concluded for one year, and not for two, as before. For contract service, you don’t need at least three or four months of military service behind you, or secondary specialized or higher education, if the person has not yet managed to serve “urgent” (such a “privilege” has long existed among those who have studied at colleges and universities) , not even Russian citizenship.
For contract service, now you don’t even need Russian citizenship
As for contracts for service in volunteer formations (irregular units within the regular army), they can generally be concluded for a period of three months or more. Although it will not be possible to complete them on time either. One of the points of the order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation of February 15, 2023 reads: "24. A citizen who is in a volunteer formation cannot be excluded from the volunteer formation due to the expiration of the contract in the following cases: 1) performing tasks as intended as part of a volunteer formation outside the location of the military unit-former or outside the territory of the Russian Federation.
True, it seems that something is not working out for the Ministry of Defense with volunteer formations: the possibility of choice has disappeared in “public services”, and now, by default, it is offered to conclude a contract for military service in regular units. Either the flow is small, or military officials are faced with the problem of how in practice to separate regular forces and volunteer formations.
However, we do have some numbers. So, on May 19, Dmitry Medvedev announced that since the beginning of the year, 117,400 people have been recruited for a full-fledged contract and volunteers, and on June 1 he said that “according to the Ministry of Defense, from January 1 to May 31, more than 134 thousand people. The problem with these numbers is (if any of Medvedev's words are to be taken for granted) that more than 16,400 additional contractors and volunteers in the 12 days between the two dates could not have appeared out of thin air. Apparently, we are talking about a massive renegotiation of contracts by “mobilized contractors” – those who were forcibly left in the army in the fall of 2022, despite the expired or even expired contracts. And there should have been at least 100 thousand of them for all types and branches of the troops, and since then their number has only increased.
Although for some, contract service in the Russian army is paradoxically perceived as a guaranteed salvation from being sent to war. Thus, the command of the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) reported that in January-May they fully implemented the recruitment plan for the contract for the positions of sergeants and junior specialists in the amount of 2,000 people: 1,500 conscripts decided to remain in these troops for an indefinite period, and another 500 people came for a contract with a "citizen". The guarantee is that they will definitely not be sent to fight from the Strategic Missile Forces, but they will pay salaries.
Contract service is paradoxically perceived as a salvation from being sent to war
Today, there are still places for contract soldiers in the "safe parts" of the Strategic Missile Forces, the Navy or the Aerospace Forces (VKS). And today there are still some who want to play “Russian roulette”, when not those who stay alive longer and regularly receive the promised payments win, but those who quickly got injured, but retained their arms and legs and were decommissioned from the army with due compensation.
At the same time, information sometimes breaks through from some Russian regions that not everything is going smoothly with the recruitment of contract soldiers – hence the increase in the price of blood.
Conscripts are not recruited
At the same time, the ongoing draft is developing, apparently, neither shaky nor roll, despite the fact that it will become more difficult to avoid future drafts (the authorities probably counted on the fact that many would decide to “exhaust themselves” earlier). So, by the beginning of June, the plan for 147,000 conscripts seems to have been completed by only half , and in some places the first conscripts have just begun to arrive. Although, probably, such a shortfall as was last spring, when only two-thirds of 134,500 soldiers were recruited, will not happen this time.
In general, it is the conscripts who are the "elephant in the room", which for some reason many people do their best not to notice. In the end, according to Russian law, a conscript can be easily sent to any war only after 4 months of training. And the fact that the Kremlin does not do this is the subject of a deal. The Russian government continues the practice of buying blood, and the death of conscripts as a result of hostilities, even in the 16th month of a full-scale war, in which the Russian government and the Russian army have already committed all possible crimes, still causes some kind of public outcry . However, this could all be over pretty soon.
Will there be a new mobilization
Both the authorities and the military commissars swear that no one will send conscripts to the war, and there will be no second wave of mobilization. Only, as in any commodity market, crises also occur in the blood market. If a commodity that is becoming scarce can not be bought at a rising price, but taken by force, then it will inevitably be taken.
At the same time, it is not a matter of quantity, but of the organizational structure and quality of people, including their motivation. These are unsolvable problems. As soon as the Kremlin realizes that the problem is getting worse, it will try to recruit everyone it can reach, just like in the fall – there is no science here.
When the Kremlin realizes that the problem is getting worse, it will try to recruit everyone it can reach.
The Kremlin's problem, however, is that a new wave of mobilization, and even more so the martial law with general mobilization, will only exacerbate the imbalance of power and the economy at all levels. As Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, said back in January, “the system of mobilization training in our country turned out to be not fully adapted to the new modern economic relations, so everything had to be corrected on the go.” Translated from the office into Russian, even “partial” mobilization had a devastating effect on the economy, and the degree of chaos and discontent of people exceeded expectations.
At the same time, 300,000 officially declared mobilized were counted along with the above-mentioned military contract soldiers who were left in the army, despite the expiring contracts. Moreover, in September-October 2022, the military leadership already clearly knew how many people would leave the army by March-April 2023, since preparation for dismissal according to the law begins just six months before the expiration of the contract. All of them also remained to serve on mobilization. Simply put, in fact, according to my estimates, no more than 150 thousand people were taken from the "citizen" to the army for mobilization, despite all the investigations that claimed about half a million mobilized.
Thus, an attempt to additional recruitment for the war, even in comparable volumes, not to mention their excess, will bring new unpredictable political and economic risks to the Russian authorities. Therefore, such an attempt is possible only in conjunction with a new escalation, as was the case in the fall of 2022. The escalation here is designed not only to justify new emergency steps, but also to cement the elite and those sections of society on which the Russian government relies.