Russia is desperate for new soldiers to carry on its brutal war in Ukraine. In a remarkable development, the country has devised a kind of “get out of jail free” card in a bid to hoover up new recruits.
According to The New York Times, Russians suspected of a crime will now see their pending charges disappear if they sign up to join the war: “Local papers nationwide are full of cases of suspected murderers, rapists and thieves who are headed off to war after signing contracts instead of facing trial.” Officials jailed for corruption are being offered amnesty and debtors are having their debts forgiven for agreeing to deploy in a war that has killed or wounded an estimated 600,000 Russian troops.
These new and exploitative efforts are a reminder that while Russia has made significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the past year, its efforts to sustain its high-casualty war of aggression, where soldiers are often treated as expendable, are not without serious obstacles. It also reflects how Moscow’s commitment to the war is reshaping and militarizing Russian society in ways that could have far-reaching effects beyond the war.
Vladimir Putin remains fully committed to the war in Ukraine, but he also knows there are limitations to ordinary Russians’ support.
Russia has already been sending people sentenced to penal colonies — some of the most notorious prisons in the world — to the front lines since 2022. But about half of that population has already reportedly been deployed. The expansion of the recruitment drive to debtors, corrupt politicians and those suspected of heinous crimes shows that the Kremlin is turning over every stone it can to avoid a nationwide draft.
Russian President Vladimir Putin remains fully committed to the war in Ukraine, but he also knows there are limitations to ordinary Russians’ support. According to Timothy Frye, a political scientist at Columbia University, the general consensus among researchers who follow public opinion on the war in Russia is that some 15% to 20% of Russians are enthusiastic about the war, about 10% are wholly opposed, and most everyone else falls in between. “They don’t want to lose the war, but they’re not willing to sacrifice to stop the war,” Frye told me. “They’re also not willing to volunteer and encourage people to go to the front in some kind of wave of organic patriotism.” Frye also said polling shows that a majority of Russians oppose general conscription, and that any attempt to impose it could spark resistance. Thus the reliance on what he called more “hidden forms of mobilization.”
Putin has a strong hand ahead of any potential negotiations with Ukraine that could be initiated after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. While the U.S. has been the biggest source of foreign aid to Ukraine, Trump is looking for a quick end to the conflict. But Putin’s recruitment struggles are a sign that he doesn’t have limitless resources if he wants to grind further into Ukraine and seize more territory ahead of a deal to end the war. The more costly the war is for the general population, the more costly it could be for Putin’s position in Russia: Popular autocrats are more influential — and less vulnerable to coups — than unpopular autocrats. The Russian government’s struggle to control a surge in inflation in its war economy only adds to the pressure on Putin to try to keep war mobilization limited while also attempting to maximally dominate Ukraine. The Kremlin’s fixation on feeding the war machine will have implications across Russian society beyond the war. Russians can observe how the legal system is being scrambled just to serve an operation that some Russians perceive as closer to Putin’s hobbyhorse than a war requiring national mobilization. Russia’s legal system is hardly independent of the political system, but Frye told me that “even for Russia, the politicization of the legal system in this case is extreme.” He also noted that people are concerned about criminals who fight at the front and survive and then return to their communities. In other words, this recruitment drive could become the source of more cynicism about the way the government functions. Putin is likely cautiously optimistic about Trump’s signals that he will probably reduce support for Ukraine ahead of any negotiations. But things are far from rosy at home as Putin tries to “win” a war that didn’t turn out the way he expected.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
