Is Russia recruiting soldiers from other countries?

1. A legal green light: decrees that open the gates to foreigners

In mid‑2025 President Vladimir Putin signed a decree explicitly allowing foreigners to serve in the Russian armed forces not only in wartime or martial law but also during mobilisation periods, and the government said qualified specialists could sign contracts with agencies such as the SVR and FSB—changes presented by the Kremlin as a way to broaden recruitment without formal conscription ^{[1] [5]}.

2. A digital recruitment blitz aimed abroad

OpenMinds and subsequent reporting documented a dramatic rise in recruitment advertising directed at foreigners: by mid‑2025 roughly one in three contract announcements on official Russian pages targeted non‑Russians, with monthly postings rising from under 100 in early 2024 to thousands by mid‑2025, and Russian‑language social platforms flooded with offers promising money, citizenship and roles claimed to be lower risk ^{[2] [3]}.

3. Incentives, coercion and the widening recruitment net

Reporting finds Moscow using a mix of financial inducements, promises of legal relief, and darker tactics to fill ranks—signing bonuses measured in months of local wages, pardons or avoidance of prosecution for some recruits, and documented cases where prisoners and vulnerable groups were steered toward service—measures that analysts say point to desperation as domestic volunteering falls ^{[6] [7] [8] [9]}.

4. Scale claimed — and why some experts doubt it

Kremlin and pro‑government figures have touted hundreds of thousands of new contracts in 2025, with some Ukrainian intelligence and Russian officials giving tallies in the low hundreds of thousands, but independent monitors such as ISW and investigative outlets caution these numbers are likely overstated or obfuscated in budget lines; ISW argues Moscow’s incentives cannot indefinitely replace losses and that some official figures are inflated to reassure the public ^{[10] [4] [11] [12]}.

5. Combatants and captives: who these foreigners are

Field reporting and prisoner of war records show foreigners captured fighting for Russia come from diverse countries including Kenya, Nepal and Tajikistan, and that many foreign recruits later claim deception or coercion, suggesting recruitment mixes genuine volunteers, economic migrants, and those recruited through dubious channels ^{[3] [8] [7]}.

6. Official pathways alongside shadow routes

Russia’s Defence Ministry codifies mechanisms for foreign citizens to serve under contract—formal application rules exist—but investigations reveal parallel networks (freelance headhunters, volunteer corps like Dobrokor, jail recruitment and private recruiters) operating to bypass traditional recruiting shortfalls, creating an opaque ecosystem of official and unofficial enlistment ^{[13] [8] [7]}.

7. Stakes and interpretations: what this recruitment achieves and what it hides

Proponents portray foreign enlistment as pragmatic manpower policy and a way to avoid unpopular mass mobilisations; critics and Western analysts see it as a symptom of manpower shortages with strategic limits, noting that even generous payouts and foreign enlistment appear insufficient to match casualty rates and may mask deeper social and budgetary strains on Moscow’s war effort ^{[1] [2] [4] [9]}.

8. What reporting cannot yet prove

Public sources document the policy shift, social media campaigns and pockets of foreign fighters, but gaps remain: independent, verifiable totals of foreign combatants, the precise mix of voluntary versus coerced recruits across regions, and full accounting of how many foreigners are deployed to front‑line versus support roles are not definitively established in the available reporting ^{[2] [3] [4]}.