Russian Firms Less Likely to Hire Those who Took Bonuses to Fight in Ukraine than Those who Didn’t, New Study Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 1 –Russian firms are less likely to hire those who took bonuses and signed contracts to fight in Ukraine than those who went there after being drafted, according to research conducted by Sergey Alekseyev, published in the Journal of Peace on August 25 and now republished by the Russian-language Riddle portal.

            The Russian scholar who teaches in Australia says that this is not “proof” of anti-war attitudes among employers but rather likely reflects concerns among then about “exposure to violence or trauma, concerns about workplace adjustment, and [an association of] volunteary enlistment to financial desperation of ideological zeal” (ridl.io/ru/geroj-na-bumage-minus-v-rezyume/ resposting academic.oup.com/jpr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jopres/xjag064/8769484).

            What Alekseyev and  his research colleagues did was to send 120 fake but plausible applications to employers which were similar except for the cv line about military service with 60 declaring that they had signed contracts to serve in Ukraine and 60 saying that they had served as draftees.

            The differences in the response of potential employers was “stark,” Alekseyev says. Fifty-five percent of those who said they had served as draftees got callbacks while only 36.7 percent of those who said they were volunteers did no, “exactly one-third” fewer than the applications which said they had been draftees.

            This research was carried out in the late spring and over the summer, when Russia’s official unemployment level was at an all-time low of 2.2 percent, but before the introduction by regional governments of requirements that firms hire a certain number of veterans or face fines.

            Alekseyev’s overall conclusion is that “the Kremlin can flatten distinctions in official speech while civilian behavior restores them given that employers appear to distinguish between service and choice and between putting on a uniform and volunteering for the campaign” in Ukraine.

            The new  regional quotas for hiring veterans, the scholar says, “may suppress the visible consequences of that distinction but may also conceal rather than eliminate it” – and that is yet another consequence of Putin’s war in Ukraine on Russia that is likely to last long into the future.