The Motherland Calls: The Russian All-Volunteer Force
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Russian conscripts are not in Ukraine.
Yet whenever you browse social media and find a video of Russians being turned into fertilizer by Ukrainian drones or artillery, you will see an endless stream of platitudes and sympathy for “those poor Russian conscripts, they don’t even want to be there.”
How so? Why is it that so many people think this? The answer, as in most things, is popular culture (and by extension, popular history). For those of you who have found me through my social media presence, you are familiar with how there is a tendency to use “Russian” and “Soviet” interchangeably which is where the genesis of this idea of the Russian conscript within the West originates.
When people think of the Russian military (outside of the ongoing Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine) the image that comes to mind is likely the depiction of the (Soviet) Russians in the opening scene of Enemy at the Gates, complete with human wave attacks and NKVD blocking detachments. The implied understanding is that those men are conscripts and while they are fighting for a righteous cause, the (Soviet) Russian leadership is carelessly wasting their lives.
Crucially, this is not reality.
What is a Conscript?
I am going to be very clear about the terminology I will be using as many articles or sources are machine translations from Russian or Ukrainian to English and there is an inevitability that terminology will be lost in translation.
When I use the term conscript I am referring to the members of the Russian Armed Forces who are part of the Russian Federation’s yearly conscript intake. Male citizens aged 18-27 are subject to conscription for one year of active duty, cannot be deployed outside of the Russian Federation, and are paid the equivalent of approximately $30 USD per month.
This definition is very important as many Western articles discussing the personnel of the Russian military will use “conscript” and “soldier” interchangeably.1 This is a mistake they should take pains to avoid given that the pre-2022 Russian military was explicitly designed around a professional core of contract soldiers meant to serve in an expeditionary capacity with a very large contingent of reservists created by mandatory military service that could be used in the event of an existential threat to the Russian homeland.2
Many English language articles will also use “conscript” to describe the men mobilized in late September 2022. It is understandable to jump to this conclusion but it is incorrect. The Russian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly emphasized that they are distinct from conscripts.3 I will discuss this in further detail.
When I say “the Russians are not using conscripts in Ukraine,” I am referring to Ukraine’s legally recognized territory according to international law. The presence of Russian conscripts in Kursk is well attested to and acknowledged by both sides. This will also be discussed in further detail.
Likewise, Russian conscription of Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine is another occurrence that is well attested to and more closely fits the mental image most have of conscription within Russia itself.4 It is a topic beyond the scope of this essay.
I am discussing Russian use (or lack thereof) of Russian conscripts.
Why Aren’t They Using Conscripts?
The answer is that for the same reasons many Westerners believe that the Russian military is a conscript military are the same reasons why conscription has a very fraught history in Russia. The Russian people are aware of the same tropes that we are but instead of being a far-away foreign country, this is their own history, government, and state. They understand that military service in this form viewed their lives as expendable and this institution is rife with abuse. While there are more contemporary memories of this such as the First Chechen War or the Soviet-Afghan War, the history conscript service stretches back into the days of the Russian Empire and nowhere has this institution been one of high social status.
Russian leadership is also aware of this fraught history and understands how politically sensitive the use of their conscripts are. They are very conscious of the fact that placing conscripts in immediate danger will result in extreme backlash due to Russia’s conscripts and their families fearing that they would once again be subjected to not only the abusive institution that Russian mandatory military service is but frontline combat that they have not been pressed into since the First Chechen War.
This is reflected in the extremely unpopular partial mobilization that was announced on September 21, 2022 following successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson. The Russians believed it was necessary to surge in manpower to stabilize their collapsing frontlines and opted to utilize the existing mobilization infrastructure created by the Russian mandatory military service system.
Despite the fact that this mobilization disproportionately targeted the periphery of the Russian society, it still resulted in many residents of metropolitan European Russia fleeing the country and a flare up of unrest that not even the outbreak of war engendered in Russian society.
While those public demonstrations within Russia which ultimately amounted to little they took place everywhere from metropolitan European Russia to the peripheral republics. There were numerous firebombings of draft offices, several instances of draft officers being shot inside their own buildings, and a mass shooting at a training field.
This is in stark contrast to the relatively sporadic acts of arson and vandalism that took place following the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. From February 24 to mid-September of 2022 there were 26 instances of attacks on Russian draft offices. Following the announcement of partial mobilization on September 21 and lasting until the announcement of the completion of partial mobilization on October 28, 2022 there were 43 attacks.5
While a discussion of how authoritarian systems build and retain legitimacy is outside of the scope of this essay, it is important to understand that they must remain broadly popular and they must retain a monopoly on violence. Brazen attacks on state institutions as a result of unpopular policy is something authoritarian systems must avoid at all costs.
The Russian state has defused this issue by creating a parallel recruitment structure that persuades volunteers with promises of financial compensation through signing bonuses and high wages rather than relying on the coercive force of Russia’s mandatory military service.
The Russian All-Volunteer Force
Russians who volunteer to serve in the Russian armed forces can expect significant financial compensation. Contract service promises a monthly wage of approximately 200,000 roubles, roughly 2.4 times higher than the average salary in Russia. In addition to this, volunteers can also expect large signing bonuses, with said bonuses being much larger in metropolitan Russia. Effective July 23, 2024, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin increased the one time signing bonus of new volunteers to 1.9 million roubles.
These measures have effectively solved Russia’s mobilization without requiring the use of any of the infrastructure affiliated with their mandatory military service which was a significant source of unrest following the 2022 partial mobilization.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that from January 1 to October 25 of 2023, 385,000 volunteers signed contracts with the Russian military. Those numbers are likely an exaggeration but the lack of another round of partial mobilization two years after the first and the absence of conscripts in Russian offensives within Ukraine points to this effort being broadly successful.
The Russians have not only created an all-volunteer force but they have created one that (at least for the time being) can not only replenish depleted units but also stand up new ones.
As previously mentioned, the peacetime Russian military was notorious for its awful conditions with rampant hazing and physical abuse being a frequently invoked reason for Russians to seek to avoid service through exemptions. The wartime Russian military is no different with horrible conditions and commanding officers showing flagrant disregard for the lives of their subordinates being well attested to.6
It is understandable to believe that these horribly abusive conditions would drive away prospective volunteers but it has not and financial incentives continue to persuade Russian volunteers despite the fact that payment, especially when the volunteer in question is killed in action, is often contested.
The fact that enduring horrible conditions and risking life and limb7 for a payday that you or your family may not ever receive defies the imagination but it points to a broad popularity of the war.
For those who are not directly involved, they are free to ignore the invasion because the all-volunteer force means the war has a minimal impact on themselves, their families, and their day to day lives. For those seeking financial gain or social mobility, military service provides opportunities to pursue them. Russian society, which is already very atomized, has been provided a framework in which they can “opt-in” to the war with many reasons to do so8, or ignore it and continue on with their lives as usual.
Given the disproportionate service of Russia’s ethnic minorities relative to their population it is understandable how many outside observers will argue that this is a poverty draft. This is not incorrect but I would advise those who do so to consider that sympathy for their socioeconomic plight should terminate when they decide that military service in a genocidal invasion is an acceptable trade for social mobility.9
Citizenship Does Not Guarantee Service
While Russians like to talk up the consequences to evading service, in reality there are functionally none.
With regards to conscription10, in the first half of 2024, only 427 Russians were convicted of evading military service by failing to appear at a draft office when summoned. Of those 427, none were sentenced to actual imprisonment. 99% of those who had criminal cases brought against them only received fines, of which only five were fined over 100k RUB.11 In 2023, only 958 people were convicted of evading service with only 10 receiving fines in excess of 100k RUB.
While a fine of 100k RUB is a little more than the monthly average wage in Russia, given the conditions Russians will face at the front and the extreme danger of frontline combat in an attritional war, this would be a small price to pay for one’s life. Regardless, conscription is often either evaded through bribes, exemptions, or fleeing the country until the individual has aged out of conscription eligibility. For those unable to do so, military service is often simply carried out as Russian law prohibits the deployment of conscripts abroad and following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military has repeatedly stressed that conscripts will not be deployed to area of the “special military operation.”
In 2023, Vladimir Tsimlyansky, Deputy Chief of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate stated, “All conscripts will be sent for military service to permanent deployment points of units and military units of the Armed Forces and other military formations on the territory of the Russian Federation.” While also noting that despite the Russian annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, conscripts would not be deployed to those regions.
When the Russians annexed those four regions in 2022, it was hypothesized that this was a legal basis for the deployment of Russian conscripts within Ukraine itself yet the Russian Ministry of Defense repeatedly stresses that this is not the case.12 Russian leadership clearly understands that their conscript manpower is extremely politically sensitive and it is therefore off-limits when it comes to their imperial conquests. The legal basis for the use of conscripts is not the problem, the use of them in any capacity is the problem.
An indication of just how sensitive the use of conscripts is can be directly observed by the few instances in which they were thrown into combat.
Good Tsar, Bad Boyar
Something many have forgotten about the early stages of the war were that there were limited reports of conscripts being thrown into combat.13 Something even more have forgotten is this was treated as a domestic scandal by the Russian state with Vladimir Putin himself demanding an investigation into how this happened.
By March 9, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense conceded that conscripts had been unintentionally sent to Ukraine and were quick to claim that they were withdrawn but not before some were captured. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would go on to state that Vladimir Putin himself had demanded materials on the involvement of conscripts be sent to the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office.
Approximately three months later twelve officers would be “held accountable” for the involvement of 600 conscripts in the “special military operation.” What exactly “being held accountable” constitutes is unknown and the issue was quickly buried.
This may seem to be a minor event but the involvement of very high level officials within the Russian state, including Vladimir Putin points to this being a serious issue that needed to be immediately addressed especially given that these same officials would repeatedly state that Russia’s professional military had the manpower it needed to pursue the invasion of Ukraine and use of the conscript military was unnecessary.
The Battle of Kursk (2024)
On August 6, 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine would launch an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, with many commentators hypothesizing that the strategic objective was the use of occupied Kursk as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, a simple morale boost to show that Ukraine was capable of offensive actions, or even a demonstration to Western partners that Russian sabre rattling was just that.
However, an extremely relevant objective of the campaign was to target the very politically sensitive conscripts who were used in a border guard or garrison capacity within the Russian homeland due to the professional military being required for frontline combat duties in the invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine has limited ability to “bring the war home” and target Russian resolve on the homefront due to their strategic bombing campaign exclusively attacking military or economic targets14 and Russia’s extensive use of volunteers.15 By launching an offensive into Russia, Ukraine could target conscript formations as they are uniformed combatants and even the most obtuse arguments against escalation still allow a country to engage uniformed members of the opposing military in combat.
Zelenskyy himself acknowledged this objective and referred to it as “replenishing the "exchange fund" – by taking the occupiers as captives and thus helping to free our people from Russian captivity.” The Ukrainians very clearly understand the value of Russian conscripts, especially in contrast to Russian volunteers, and this is easily illustrated by comparing previous prisoner swaps to the prisoner swaps that happened immediately after the Kursk offensive.
The Price is Right
On August 15 both Russian and Ukrainian representatives announced they had commenced negotiations for the exchange of prisoners captured during Ukraine’s Kursk offensive which began less than 10 days prior.
On August 24, Russia would exchange 115 Ukrainian POWs for 115 soldiers captured “from territories controlled by the Kiev regime.” On September 14, another one for one prisoner swap would occur with 103 Russian soldiers taken prisoner in Kursk being exchanged for 103 Ukrainian prisoners of war, many of whom were involved in the defense of Mariupol with Azov Brigade announcing that 23 of those exchanged were members of the unit. On October 18 another one for one prisoner swap would occur with 95 prisoners being exchanged. As in the previous swaps, most of the Russian prisoners were taken in Kursk and many of the Ukrainian prisoners were defenders of Mariupol.
Azov Brigade’s history and ideological tendencies are beyond the scope of this essay but it would be remiss to disregard the place they hold within Russian propaganda because of that history. They featured extremely prominently in Russian statements prior to and immediately following the full-scale invasion as they attempted to justify the “denazification of Ukraine.”
Simultaneously, it is important to understand that “Mariupol defenders” are not exclusively members of Azov. There were other Ukrainian units who fought in the Siege of Mariupol and as a result are also “Mariupol defenders” but have minimal association with Azov beyond defending the same city at the same time.
In addition to members of the Ukrainian military who were taken prisoner following the Russian occupation of the city, some Ukrainian civilians, most of them law enforcement, were diverted from Russian filtration camps into prisoner of war camps due to their profession or for suspicion of being spies and collaborators.16
These one for one swaps are notable as previous exchanges of Russian prisoners for Ukrainian prisoners, but particularly those from Mariupol, were seldom one for one exchanges and often involved very politically valuable Ukrainian prisoners.
The most prominent of these was a Saudi mediated exchange on September 22, 2022 where Ukraine received 215 prisoners in exchange for 55 Russians or Russian collaborators. This swap involved many high profile prisoners on both sides.
For the Ukrainians, most of those who were returned were Mariupol defenders.
This included British nationals Aiden Aislin and Shaun Pinner, as well as Moroccan national Brahim Saadoune, all members of the Ukrainian 36th Separate Marine Brigade.17 They would be traded along with their commander Sergey Volynsky.
Prominent members of Azov’s leadership such as Denys Prokopenko, the commander of Azov battalion in addition to four other Azov commanders would also be traded.
For the Russians, by far the most prominent of the 55 they received was Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch and personal friend of Vladimir Putin18 who was arrested in April 2022 attempting to cross into Russia after escaping house arrest.
The Russian government very clearly understands their conscripts are extremely politically sensitive given that they’re willing to rapidly negotiate one for one trades that previously required extremely prominent Ukrainian prisoners.
The assertion that the Russians are both making extensive use of conscripts and that they have a complete disregard for their lives is incongruent with the measures taken to remove them from combat duties, assure the public they will not see combat, and the rapidity with which they engage in prisoner swaps to bring those who did see combat home.
The Russian Glass Jaw
One observation is that the Russian political system is brittle and true mobilization by activating their conscript military for use in frontline combat risks breaking the system. While the protests following the full-scale invasion or the 2022 partial mobilization did face Russian riot police, they were not crushed by them. They flamed out when people realized that the war would not come for them. If the Russians are forced to tap the conscript military they are likely to face significant domestic unrest necessitating either concessions or crackdown. The former will eat into the newly tapped manpower supply while the latter will require soldiers who then cannot be sent to the front.
The social contract in Putin’s Russia has revolved around Putin being the strongman who kept the chaos of the 90s away and left the common folk alone. This risks shattering that contract.
Another observation is that North Korea’s provision of manpower (a brigade sized element at time of writing with rumors of up to 100,000 to be sent in the future) is far more serious than it initially seems, even when disregarding how wildly escalatory a Russian ally becoming a co-belligerent is. North Korea’s reputation as both a pariah state and the butt of many jokes has led to numerous commentators dismissing them as cannon fodder or commenting that “they’re [the Russians] scraping the bottom of the barrel” but from the Russian perspective this could not be farther from the truth.
For the Russians, much of their approach to the reality of their invasion being a protracted war can be thought of as kicking a can down a road where the Russians continue to make short term decisions and hope that Western support and Ukrainian resolve will dry up before they run out of road.
The Russian pre-war professional military was smashed on the gates of Kyiv. They spent their prison population to capture Bakhmut. They are in the process of gambling away their Soviet inheritance. Increasing signing bonuses and wages for volunteers indicate that the supply of those willing to go to the front is likely drying up.
The Russians were running out of road and North Korean manpower will give them more road to work with.
This is distinct from English language articles because Russian or Ukrainian newsrooms who release their work in English generally do not do this. It points to a lack of editorial standards out of many Western newsrooms as well as a tendency to hire Russia experts as Eastern Europe experts who bring along the resulting blind spots.
The common adage was “The Russians have a large and modern military. The large part isn’t very modern and the modern part isn’t very large.”
A point of evidence in favor of this being a translation issue and Western reporters being lazy about terminology is Mediazona, a Russian anti-Putin independent media outlet, has a frequently updated project in which they maintain a total of confirmed deceased Russian military personnel. This total also attempts to break down the casualties by service branch and nowhere do “conscripts” appear as a category but “mobilized” and “volunteers” do.
“Convicts” do also appear as a category in the Mediazona project, the use of penal battalions by Wagner and other formations is outside of the scope of this essay.
We’re going to chalk up the two attacks on October 30 to lag.
I would prefer not to use social media as a source but Russian soldiers going to social media to complain about the conditions they are subjected to is an extremely common occurrence, that is seldom covered in Western media outside of publications known for tabloids or clickbait due to their frequency.
This is a quite literal statement. The high rate of Russian casualties is exacerbated by serious insufficiencies in Russian first aid, field medicine, and casevac with frequent reports of otherwise treatable injuries to the extremities resulting in death for the wounded.
Also outside of the scope of this essay but relevant to this point is that opportunities for financial or social mobility as a result of the war is not limited to frontline military service. Russians can seek employment in the Russian defense industry which also offers competitive salaries. Those who already possess wealth may seek to invest in properties being sold in occupied Ukraine.
More reading on the trends of military service in Russia with regard to ethnic minorities can be found here. This paper focuses on the demographics of the post full-scale invasion but pre 2022 mobilization Russian military and notes that service from those on the periphery was common even prior to 2022.
Distinct from mobilization. Given the nature of the Russian state and the method by which the 2022 partial mobilization was put into place, it is likely that many of the mobilized were pressured into service but they are legally distinct from conscripts. Further examination of this is difficult due to my lack of understanding Russian and the aforementioned use of “conscript” and “soldier” as interchangeable terms that is likely exacerbated by machine translation.
As of writing, this is approximately $975.
The Russian annexation of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts took place on September 30, 2022. Russia’s partial began 9 days earlier on September 21. It is possible that this was the intent but the backlash to mobilization (26 attacks on draft offices had occurred by September 30) resulted in Russia quietly shelving this plan.
The unofficial but also official explanation is that lower level officers brought their conscripts with them in the earliest stages of the war due to many of them not being aware they would be invading Ukraine until given the order and many of the soldiers under their command not made aware at all.
Ukraine shifting to a strategic bombing campaign that targets civilians is of questionable value. They retain a rhetorical advantage over the Russians on the international stage by targeting Russian military or industrial sites and as seen historically and in Ukraine itself, conventional strategic bombing campaigns usually galvanize resolve rather than break it.
Casualties amongst the volunteers do “bring the war home” but the emotional and societal impact is lessened as a volunteer “signed up for this.”
One of the individuals who was included in a prisoner exchange in May 2024 was Mariana Checheliuk, a police detective from Mariupol who was transferred to a prisoner of war camp following Russian interrogators discovering her profession.
The three were subject to show trials in the so called Donetsk People’s Republic where they were given death sentences. Aiden Aslin was also subject of a number of Russian propaganda videos where he appeared having visible indications of torture while reading forced confessions.
Vladimir Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter and prior to the full-scale invasion, American intelligence identified Medvedchuk as a candidate for leading a pro-Russian Ukrainian puppet government.