How the Kremlin is recruiting troops in 2026

At the end of last year, we at Join Ukraine assessed the mobilisation potential of Russia's armed forces. In short, our research suggested that around 200,000 people a year could join voluntarily. That isn't enough to cover Russian losses, so we wondered how the Kremlin would close the gap. Would it announce mobilisation, coerce young men doing compulsory military service into signing contracts, or use bureaucratic measures to force unemployed people into uniform?

Two months later, the answer is clearer. The Kremlin is counting on students, businesses, people living in occupied territories, and anyone who can be pushed by administrative means into signing a contract to fight in the war.

In autumn 2022, the Kremlin learned that overt mobilisation comes at a political cost. There were queues at Verkhny Lars (the only legally operational land border checkpoint between Russia and Georgia), raids in courtyards between apartment blocks, panicked messages to human rights chat groups. Since then, Moscow has tried to buy the public's silence, avoiding the word "mobilisation" and seeking other means to achieve its end.

The Russian General Staff has a target of 409,000 contract soldiers for 2026. The reality is that in the first quarter, recruitment averaged about 800 a day, down from 1,000-1,200 a day a year earlier (and this is with administrative coercion) – a decline of roughly 20%.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimates that Russia lost about 89,000 troops in the first quarter and recruited 80,000. The gap is forcing the Kremlin to raise sign-on bonuses again (which were significantly reduced at the end of 2025) and to tighten administrative pressure to keep the manpower flowing.

Recruitment and pressure on students

At a private meeting in early 2026, Valery Falkov, Russia's Minister for Science and Higher Education, told the heads of the country's biggest universities that at least 2% of their students should be signing contracts with the Defence Ministry, according to Latvia-based media outlet Meduza, citing the independent Telegram channel Faridaily. That would mean about 44,000 university students – or up to 76,000 if further education colleges are included.

For the purposes of comparison: if the quota is met, almost a fifth of the Russian General Staff's annual target of 409,000 contract soldiers will be filled by one group alone: young people seeking an education.

The main recruitment tool is simple pressure. Radio Liberty has uncovered documents from Moscow's prestigious Higher School of Economics that show that students who are falling behind are being offered contracts with the Defence Ministry as an "alternative to expulsion".

Meduza has reported that Moscow universities have cut the deadlines for submitting missed assignments to two weeks. Fail, and students have a choice of either being expelled and then called up for compulsory military service, or signing up with the Unmanned Systems Forces "for one year on special terms and conditions". Either way they end up in the military. The difference is several million roubles in sign-on money and a high chance of being killed in Ukraine (but who considers the risks?).

And the "one year" promise is a lie. Human rights groups have confirmed that under decree No. 647 signed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin on 21 September 2022, contracts are automatically extended until the end of the so-called "partial mobilisation".

Annexes to the contracts – samples of which have been found on the websites of Russian universities and local administrations by the independent Russian investigative outlet Verstka – state that contract soldiers may be transferred from the Unmanned Systems Forces to the infantry. Selection takes place only three months after signing, and if a candidate doesn't make the cut, the contract remains valid, and they have to serve in a different branch of the military.

Bauman State Technical University in Moscow is one of the most striking examples. The official website of the university's military training centre openly invites students to join the Unmanned Systems Forces. But our internal monitoring of private Bauman parent chat groups shows a more revealing picture from the inside. Mothers of students who are facing expulsion for a single failed course describe how their children were "politely" encouraged, at the enlistment office on Yablochkova Street, to sign a drone contract instead of doing compulsory military service.

The academic authorities make no concessions: students are only allowed one resit attempt. Transferring to another university is close to impossible: Bauman's programmes are highly specialised and the gap with other institutions can run to 100 academic credits. It's either expulsion or the army.

According to Groza, an independent student-focused Russian media outlet, 269 universities and colleges in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories are already involved in the campaign, from St Petersburg State University (Putin's alma mater) to Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, each with its own mandatory quotas.

On 20 March 2026, Pavel Malkov, the governor of Russia's Ryazan Oblast, signed Resolution No. 17-pg "On the Selection of Candidates for Military Service". Between 20 March and 20 September, every organisation in the oblast, both state-owned and private, is required to "select candidates" to sign contracts with the Russian armed forces: two people from businesses with 150-300 employees, three from those with up to 500, and five from those with more than 500. The governor will be overseeing implementation personally. The resolution was first highlighted by analysts at the Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent volunteer investigative organisation. After a public outcry, the resolution was removed from the Ryazanskie Vedomosti (Ryazan News) website, although it is still on the federal legal information portal. The governor's press service has declined to provide any further details.

This is the first known case of such a quota appearing in public as an official document. Unofficially, similar practices are likely to exist in other Russian regions too.

In February 2026, Russian regional and municipal authorities were instructed to compile lists of "volunteers" who were behind with utility bill payments. In the event that mobilisation is announced, these people will be among the first to receive call-up papers. For now, they are being offered "voluntary" contracts in exchange for having their debts written off.

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) has reported that if a debtor is a woman, her husband or son is added to the list.

Migrants form another pipeline. A decree signed by Putin in December 2024 required foreign nationals who had not regularised their status by 30 April 2025 to leave the country – except for those who signed contracts with the Defence Ministry. Moscow deliberately makes life difficult for those without Russian passports, presenting a contract with the armed forces as the only route to citizenship and a way to avoid deportation.

The classic Wagner scheme of recruiting in prisons never ended. What began in summer 2022, when the Wagner Group led by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin recruited thousands of inmates to fight in Ukraine in exchange for pardons, pay and freedom, has since been formalised and expanded. In one month of 2026 alone, at least 5,000 inmates and remand prisoners were recruited into the Russian forces. Some were offered the closure of their criminal case in exchange for signing a contract right there in the courtroom.

A separate pipeline running alongside is young men doing their compulsory military service. Under Russian law, they may not be sent to war. But as soon as they arrive at their units, these 18-year-olds come under pressure to sign contracts – through offers of money, psychological conditioning, beatings, torture. Some creative methods are being used. Conscripts from Chelyabinsk and Kurgan oblasts have reported that payments "under a contract" they had supposedly signed with the Defence Ministry appeared in their bank accounts with no payment references. Their commanding officers said it was a "software glitch"; human rights defenders called it a test of remote recruitment, Ukrainian news outlet 24tv.uа reported.

Another layer in the system is freelance intermediaries. The Russian media outlet Vazhnye Istorii (Important Stories) has reported on an entity called Voevoda (Warlord) that received over RUB 360 million (US$4.8 million) in 2025, much of it from Moscow and regional budgets, for "selecting candidates". One contractor earned RUB 7 million (over US$93,400) – more than the actual recruit on the front lines.

Another channel is gaming platforms. The Center for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) has reported that Russia uses Discord, Arma 3 and other gaming communities to recruit foreign nationals. Two South Africans signed contracts in July 2024 after talking to a recruiter on Discord. One of them was killed in Luhansk Oblast a few weeks later.

Since 2022, Russia has recruited over 18,000 foreign nationals from 128 countries through fraudulent centres, private organisations, diplomatic channels and cultural networks. The logic is the same as with students and debtors: different hooks for different audiences, but the same result – a signature on an open-ended contract.

Forced conscription continues in Russian-occupied Crimea. The share of Crimeans in Russia's conscription pool has risen from 0.32% in 2015 to 2% today. More than 30% of those convicted of draft evasion are Crimean Tatars, who make up 13-15% of the peninsula's population.

In the occupied parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, deferments for full-time students are being cancelled en masse in April 2026. Ukraine's National Resistance Center says young men are summoned to military enlistment offices on the pretext of "updating their details" or "verifying documents". Once there, their certificates proving that they are in higher education are ignored and they are sent for military training, even though they are entitled to defer military service under Russian law.

Mariupol City Council has reported that shooting practice, tactical training, military drills, marches and oath-taking ceremonies pledging allegiance to Russia are taking place at the so-called "Mariupol State University" in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol.

The conscription of residents of occupied territories is expressly prohibited under Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Russia is well aware of this – and makes no attempt to comply.

There has been no mass public backlash. But in the closed Bauman parent chat groups, mothers share stories of their sons being pushed into service and vent their anger at the cynical send-offs from the dean's offices – remarks along the lines of "He'll come back a real man." Even in private spaces, the subject is quickly shut down, with chat administrators asking group members "not to discuss conscription". Posts on Pikabu, a Russian-language social platform often described as the "Russian Reddit", are deleted as "unverified information".

The Kremlin publicly denies the existence of quotas for students, while acknowledging that recruitment is taking place. Monitoring of VKontakte, Russia's largest social network, by Join Ukraine indirectly points to the same process: the posts that draw the strongest response are the ones about double standards: "The children of the elite are definitely not in the trenches, but 18-year-olds are being sent to the front lines." The discontent is real, but it's being funnelled into class resentment rather than resistance.

Anger is building towards officials, the elite and the wealthy, who are insulated from conscription. So far, however, it has yet to be translated into action.

Administrative pressure has limits. For now, the Kremlin is spreading it widely – students, debtors, migrants and businesses. But it's already clear that the 2% quota for universities is as high as it can be without triggering a public outcry. When it is no longer enough – a matter of months, not years – the Kremlin will have three options: raise the quota to 4-5%, roll out the Ryazan-style model to businesses nationwide, or finally announce a second wave of "partial mobilisation".

A shift to overt mobilisation will become more likely if one of three triggers is activated.

First, a battlefield emergency, such as a defensive collapse in a key sector or heavy losses in a single episode.

Second, a political decision to speed up the offensive ahead of upcoming peace talks.

Third, tougher sanctions or a fall in oil prices that undermines regional bonus schemes. In an article published in February, we outlined a scenario that could see around 400,000 people mobilised by a single decree – largely from the provinces so that Moscow and St Petersburg are unaffected.

The infrastructure is already in place. Digital call-up papers are deemed served seven days after being entered into the register, regardless of whether or not they are actually received. Year-round conscription was introduced on 1 January 2026. Military enlistment offices can access electronic medical records, making evasion on health grounds far harder. The system is on standby, waiting only for the order.

And yet the creature in the Kremlin hesitates. He's afraid of announcing mobilisation because the consequences are uncertain and the risks hard to calculate. He's afraid of losing the war in Ukraine. He's even afraid of the war ending with the current front line. So instead of mobilisation, Russia has a conveyor belt of semi-voluntary contracts via university offices, payroll departments, housing offices and migration centres. It's working for now: Russia is filling tens of thousands of positions each month. It would be naïve to expect the country to be broken by a single shock – whether riots after the announcement of actual mobilisation, or the eventual exhaustion of administrative pressure.

But it would also be delusional to regard the Putin regime as a monolith. In the first few days of the "partial mobilisation" in September 2022, an estimated 700,000 to one million men left Russia – more than the Kremlin was able to call up.

In June 2023, Prigozhin's private army marched from Rostov-on-Don to Voronezh in a single day, meeting almost no resistance and stopping only 200 km from Moscow.

In spring 2024, the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow showed that the security services were incapable of either preventing the attack – despite having received a direct warning from the US government – or responding quickly when it happened.

Russia's frontline defeats near Kharkiv and Kherson in autumn 2022, the retreat from Lyman, the failure near Avdiivka in 2023, the creeping damage to oil refining caused by Ukrainian strikes this year and last – each of these could be dismissed as an isolated episode, but taken together, they show that under certain conditions the Russian system can look helpless.

That doesn't mean Russia is going to collapse tomorrow after a single push. It means pressure works – slower than we would like, but it works.

Every Bauman student forced into service, every business owner in Ryazan who does not want to hand over five employees, every debtor told "go to Pokrovsk" in exchange for having their utility bills written off is another small stone in the foundation the Kremlin is building more nervously with each passing year.

Ukraine's task is at once simple and incredibly hard: hold the front line, strike the rear, document war crimes, and shape public opinion inside Russia. A weak link in the machine will appear. The only question is how ready we will be when it does.

Liubov Tsybulska, strategic communications expert and specialist in hybrid threats in Ukraine. Founder and current director of Join Ukraine

Translated by Ganna Bryedova

Edited by Teresa Pearce

Disclaimer: Articles reflect their author’s point of view and do not claim to be objective or to explore every aspect of the issues they discuss. The Ukrainska Pravda editorial board does not bear any responsibility for the accuracy of the information provided, or its interpretation, and acts solely as a publisher. The point of view of the Ukrainska Pravda editorial board may not coincide with the point of view of the article’s author.