Drunks in Rural Villages Now Being Recruited in Large Numbers to Fill Depleted Ranks of Russian Army in Ukraine --and Then Dying in Their First Battles There

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 8 – As the fourth anniversary of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine approaches, Russian officials are now recruiting inebriated men in rural villages, a group they had passed over earlier because of their unfitness for military service but now have little choice but to take in given the depleted ranks of the Russian army.

            Indeed, The Barents Observer reports, villages far from major cities are now “an important source of soldiers for the Russian Army” because “the lack of work, hopelessness, and widespread alcohol use make men living there an easy catch for recruiters” (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/kak-v-rossijskoj-glubinke-verbuut-i-otpravlaut-na-smert-pusih-ludej/443158).

            When those in these villages who drink heavily sober up after signing contracts to serve in the military, they find themselves trapped: If they try to get out of the contracts they’ve signed, they’re faced with the threat of criminal charges; but if they do go into battle, their weakened mental and physical state means that they are often the first to die. 

            Human rights activists working in the northwestern part of the Russian Federation say that in the past, recruiters occasionally signed up the inebriated; but now, they tell The Barents Observer this has become a mass phenomenon given the manpower shortages the Russian Army is experiencing and the enormous bonuses recruiters are given for signing up anyone.