Russia is offering inflated salaries for volunteers to fight in Ukraine. Many of them would normally be considered too old to fight.
YURI KADOBNOV/AFP via Getty Images
- Russia is offering conscripts $4,000-a-month salaries to fight in Ukraine, the BBC reported.
- Russia's military resources have been greatly depleted by its invasion of Ukraine.
- Russia removed age caps for serving soldiers last month and has asked veterans to fight.
Russia is offering inflated salaries for military recruits, many of whom are veterans beyond traditional serving age, to fight in Ukraine, according to reports.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has greatly depleted the country's military resources, with an estimated 10,000 Russian troops killed since February 24. Ukraine said last weekend that Russia was sending a large number of reserve troops into eastern Ukraine to reinforce its positions and break a deadlock.
Russian recruitment officers have recently started telling veterans to make their whereabouts known to the military, Jack Watling, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told The Wall Street Journal.
Those veterans tapped by Moscow would ordinarily be considered too old to fight. However, on May 25, Russia's parliament voted to remove age restrictions for serving soldiers.
Before the change, recruits could only be aged between 18 and 40.
Additionally, the military has raised salaries for contract soldiers to around $4,000 a month, complete with bonuses for destroying planes and tanks, the Journal and BBC Russia reported.
A Russian military veteran of the 1990s Chechen war, identified as Dmitry, told BBC Russia that recruiters also offered to pay off his loans if he signed up to fight.
Short-term contracts lasting just a few months are also being offered, with those volunteers receiving just three to seven days of training, BBC Russia reported. Previous reports have indicated that Russian fighters in Ukraine were poorly trained and ill equipped.
Dmitry told BBC Russia that most of the volunteers who signed up with him in the Russian city of Rostov were people over the age of 45.
"In general, I looked at it all and realized that this is really a one-way ticket," he said.
BBC Russia noted that of 155 Russian volunteers it identified as being killed in Ukraine during the invasion, 57% of them were older than 40.
According to BBC Russia, conscripts and volunteers have three ways to join the war in Ukraine: By signing up through the Ministry of Defense, signing up through the Russian Guard in Chechnya, or signing up with pro-Kremlin separatist factions controlling the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Russia's invasion is entering its fifth month, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg saying last week that the war could take years.
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