Russia has accelerated its attempts to recruit mercenaries bhttps://www.thetimes.com/article/tactics-of-russian-mercenaries-in-africa-bode-ill-for-ukraine-l8s9ngs2m oth from within its borders and beyond to replace its troop losses in Ukraine, with reports of plane-loads of Libyan war veterans now preparing to join the battle.
Marshal Khalifa Haftar, 78, a Gaddafi-era army officer long backed by Russia’s mercenary army, the Wagner Group, is said to have agreed to repay President Putin by sending his loyalists. A plane packed with Wagner operatives and their Arab allies, many of them Syrians who fought for Haftar against the government in Tripoli, is reported to have taken-off from the Khmeimim air base on the Syrian coast bound for Moscow.
Veterans of the Syrian civil war have been offered up to $1,000 a month to fight in Ukraine, while Russian job websites have been flooded with adverts offering about $700 a month for anyone willing to join the Black Sea fleet based in Sebastopol. A similar amount is offered for trained paratroopers to join at officer-level positions. The salary offers are many times higher than that paid to conscript forces.
The recruitment drive has been prompted by heavier-than-expected losses on the front line, with the Ukrainian military claiming to have killed 15,600 Russian soldiers, more than died in the Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted a decade. US intelligence officials have given a more conservative estimate of 7,000 Russian casualties.
Recruitment offices have been set up in cities across Russia to counter what military experts describe as a cliff-edge in the spring, when conscripts finish their one-year term in the army. Professor Mark Galeotti, of the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank, said that Putin could be recruiting mercenaries as a quick fix, while looking to bolster his conscript force in the longer term.
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“The boys who they conscript can’t be thrown into the battlefield straight away. They are going to have to do months of training before they are useful,” he told The Times. “Unless Putin declares a state of emergency or a formal war, which would blow a huge hole in his claims about how well things are going, then [the current] cohort of conscripts are going to be demobilised. It means there’s going to be a gap. I suspect that if they are trying to recruit mercenaries, it is precisely to fill that gap.”
Professor Phillips O’Brien, an expert in strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, said that Putin had already deployed about 75 per cent of his best fighting divisions to Ukraine. “Because of a shortage of trained, professional personnel, if Russia is going to fight this long war some are mentioning, they are going to have to create almost an entire new army,” he said.
The new recruits would need months of training if they were to avoid becoming “cannon fodder”, he added, predicting that it could take a year to replace some of the highly trained forces lost in Ukraine.
Russia is also ramping up its attempt to bring in fighters from Syria, including veterans trained by Wagner and those who have served in militias alongside Russian troops, and is even considering civilians with little combat experience.
Abu Niwas, 39, a painter from the Syrian town of Suweida, said he had enlisted for Russia despite not having picked up a gun for years. “I haven’t worked for a long time and I have mouths to feed,” said the father of two. “Death is my destiny in both cases but at least I can die in Ukraine and leave something valuable to my family. I have been told I would get $7,000 for fighting and $3,500 to be a guard.”
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Abu Niwas was approached by a local lawyer turned recruiting agent who will get a commission based on the number of applicants selected.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, each fighter has been promised €1,000 a month; many times more than they would earn at home.
Evidence is emerging that Russia has already relied heavily on its non-Slav ethnic minorities in Ukraine: a list of wounded soldiers leaked from a hospital in Rostov shows many with the first name Mohammed.
Kamil Galeev, a fellow at the Wilson Centre think tank who posted the list on Twitter, said that “minorities are wildly over-represented on the battlefields as the cannon fodder”. He said that minorities such as Tatars and Kazakhs were typically poorer than ethnic Slavs, who are often able to bribe their way out of being conscripted.
Videos of Russian prisoners of war also indicate the substantial ethnical minority make up of the army. In a dozen videos watched by The Times, only one soldier said he was from the Moscow region. Others were from Buryatia and Tuva, regions with substantial non-Slavic populations.
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The prospect of a high monthly income is also attracting Uzbeks to fight in Ukraine after a video clip of a man claiming to be an Uzbek and driving a Russian army truck into Ukraine was shared widely on a messaging app. The man tells viewers he was chosen because he had previous fighting experience in Afghanistan. “There are many Uzbeks here who have come to take part in the war. There are people from Tajikistan too. We have a contract,” he says.
Tracked down by Uzbek journalists, he confirmed that he was fighting for money, but also for the possibility of gaining Russian citizenship. He said he had found out about the job at an employment listing website.
