The Russian Defense Ministry has launched a new recruitment drive for volunteers with advertisements on social media, billboards and television, the UK Defense Ministry said in a Sunday morning intelligence assessment.
The campaign has a recruitment target of 400,000 volunteers, but the UK Defense Ministry said that it remained highly unlikely that the Kremlin would reach this goal.
“The new adverts appeal to potential recruits’ masculine pride, appealing for ‘real men,’ as well as highlighting the financial benefits of joining up,” said the Defense Ministry.
Russian Defense Ministry is in competition with Wagner
The Russian Defense Ministry is competing with the Wagner mercenary group for the same “limited pool of Russian fighting-age men,” said the UK Ministry.
Wagner lost access to prisons to enlist convicts in exchange for presidential pardons due to political strife with the Russian Defense Ministry, western intelligence agencies assessed at the beginning of the year. The six-month contracts for tens of thousands of convict soldiers who survived their deployment began to expire in March.
The private military company had to turn to more traditional forms of recruitment. In mid-March, Wagner set up recruitment centers in 42 locations across the Russian Federation, Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said. The UK Defense Ministry said some of these teams were set up in sports centers, and that recruiters have given career talks at Moscow high schools.
At the end of March, Reuters reported that a giant advertisement featuring an armed masked man was set up on the façade of an office building next to a highway in Moscow. Covering 17 stories, the poster called on Russians to join the group, saying “Join the winning team!” and “Together we will win.”
In February, job offers were seen circulating on a Wagner-affiliated social media group, offering contracts for 240,000 rubles with “good bonuses for performance.” The advertisement sought people with and without military experience aged 22-50 for the roles of infantry, artillery and other combat specialists. The posting also noted that psychologists, medics, and drivers were needed as part of a separate recruitment drive.
Prigozhin said in March that he sought to recruit around 30,000 fighters by the middle of May, Reuters reported and claimed that Wagner was hiring 500-800 people a day.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
