The US-based Institute for the Study of War said the military commissar in Vladivostok, on the fringes of Russia’s Far East, deliberately sent misleading enlistment letters to men aged between 23 and 65 with military experience. “Russian recruiters likely intend with the letters to confuse recipients into believing they have been officially and legally recruited,” it said. “The letters are really just invitations to discuss volunteering.” The Russian military has suffered 75,000 dead or wounded, and analysts said Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, now needs thousands more troops. The debate in Russia over whether to fully mobilize has intensified since the Russian military pounded around Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine this month. Some analysts have questioned whether it would change the course of the war, and Mr Putin wants to avoid a full mobilization because he does not want to risk causing unrest. Instead, he ordered Russia’s regions to produce volunteer battalions, but acceptance was slow, despite large enlistment bonuses.
Full mobilization “the only option left”
Ramzan Kadyrov issued a call to arms last week, which the Institute for the Study of War said emboldened recruits. “Russian administration officials are rallying around Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s call for ‘self-mobilization,’” it said. It listed several regions that had stepped up recruitment following Mr Kadryov’s message, which also hinted at his influence in Russia at the national level. The Kremlin has become so desperate for army volunteers that it has ordered conscription in St. Petersburg and Moscow, its two political centers it hoped to spare. He also ordered the Wagner mercenary group to increase its recruitment from prisons. The deal for prisoners is simple. If they survive six months fighting for Wagner in the Ukraine, they will be pardoned for their crimes — be it murder or robbery. But for Russia’s vocal hawks, that’s not enough. Full mobilization is the only option left. “We have no choice,” Alexander Dugin said in a new essay published on the nationalist tsargrad.tv website he edits. “(We must) move the country on a military basis in politics, economy, culture and the sphere of information.” A car bomb last month killed Mr. Dungin’s daughter, the pro-war journalist Darya Dugina. He is perhaps the most high-profile of a group of arch-nationalist Russian thinkers promoting an aggressive Russian foreign policy and the creation of a great Eurasian hegemony ruled by the Kremlin.
