The Kremlin has ordered Russian regional authorities to recruit contract soldiers under a nationwide target of 409,000 people this year as Moscow seeks to replenish its forces without announcing another mobilization.
The recruitment quotas were set by the Kremlin and Russia’s defense ministry, according to people familiar with the system who spoke to the Financial Times (FT). Pressure on regional and municipal officials has increased in recent months, the report said, according to The Moscow Times.
“Local authorities are under enormous pressure to recruit the required number of soldiers every year,” Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told the FT.
“They know who has debts, who is under investigation and who recently lost their driving license, and those are the people they target,” he said.
Kluge tracks Russian military recruitment through federal and regional budget data. His calculations showed that 71,216 federal enlistment bonuses were paid in the first quarter of 2026, the lowest first-quarter figure in three years.
Regional budget data indicated that recruitment later stabilized at about 1,000 contracts per day, or roughly 30,000 per month. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said nearly 200,000 people had signed military contracts during the first half of the year.
Latest pressure campaign and mobilization
Russia has relied on contract recruitment, high salaries, and signing bonuses since Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists in September 2022. That call-up prompted hundreds of thousands of Russians to leave the country.
Rights activists cited by The Moscow Times said the latest pressure campaign was intended to help Putin avoid another politically unpopular mobilization.
“Putin is clearly postponing another wave of mobilization, so the defense ministry has to put increasing pressure on different groups of people to sign contracts,” said Grigory Sverdlin, founder of the anti-war project Get Lost, which helps Russians avoid military service.
Reported recruitment methods have included police detaining men on the streets, officials approaching potential recruits at their homes or workplaces and authorities targeting people with debts, suspended sentences, or recent military service.
Police and military enlistment officials carried out coordinated street raids in Russia’s Penza region in June, according to previous reports. Similar recruitment operations were reported in Ulyanovsk and other regions.
In Rostov, authorities reportedly detained 35 factory workers as part of a recruitment effort. The results of such campaigns have often been limited.
Police in Russia’s Khabarovsk region said they conducted 2,500 recruitment “conversations” last year, persuading 32 people to sign contracts. All but four of those recruits were suspects in criminal investigations, according to The Moscow Times.
Regional governments have also sharply increased signing bonuses. In some parts of Russia, combined federal and regional payments for signing a military contract have reached several million rubles.
The financial incentives have helped create an industry of private recruiters who receive payments for persuading others to join the military.
New contract soldiers are primarily being used to replace losses in frontline units instead of forming operational reserves. Despite the continuing inflow of personnel, Russia’s territorial gains have remained limited.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the FT that Russia’s deployed force had grown while the scale of its offensive operations had declined.
“If they cannot improve recruitment or conduct mobilization, Russian units will once again begin to experience personnel shortages,” Kofman said, warning that the forces could eventually become vulnerable and lose territory.
Recruitment is also complicated by desertion. At least 28,000 Russian service members have been convicted of abandoning their units, according to the rights organization Peace Plea.
The real figure could be at least twice as high, Ukrainian analytical group Frontelligence Insight reported, citing internal Russian documents.