During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops and military advisors abroad to fight in foreign wars. Today, Russia recruits thousands of foreigners to fight in its war in Ukraine. For Russia, a nation with a reputation for endless manpower, this marks a substantial change, highlighting the struggle the Kremlin is having balancing military and civilian economic commitments.
Russia’s foreign recruitment schemes are likely funded and operated by provincial governments, rather than the Kremlin itself, induced by the pressure of regional recruitment systems that force provincial leaders to choose between losing their jobs or slowly feeding their labor force into the meat grinder. Based on an analysis of operations in Cuba, I assess that some states hide their involvement or approval of foreign recruiting to avoid sanctions.
While foreign recruitment accounts for only a small portion of total manpower, and many countries have broken up prominent recruiting efforts, the economic benefits of foreign troops are almost certainly too great to be abandoned. So long as the Kremlin continues to struggle to keep both the front lines and the factories running smoothly, foreigners will continue to appear in Russian uniform.
The Sources of Foreign Recruits
Based on journalism, reports from nongovernmental organizations, and governmental statements, Russia has conducted recruiting efforts in Cuba, Syria, Central Asia (both in the region and among the large migrant worker population in Russia), and in South Asian countries like Nepal and India. There have been rumors and some reporting of recruitment from additional countries, but a lack of details and evidence makes them unfit for analysis. First, we examine the scale of recruitment operations.
In Cuba, 200 people have been positively confirmed to have joined the Russian military between the summer and fall of 2023, while Cuban-American nongovernmental organizations estimate the figure to be at least 750 and potentially more than 1,000. Numbers in Syria are less clear and less current, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in January 2023 that 2,000 Syrian army soldiers had been dispatched to aid the Russian military. There are no estimates for the number of Central Asians who have joined the Russian military, but between the countries themselves and the five million strong migrant population of Central Asians in Russia, it seems a conservative estimate that several thousand may have joined the Russian military. There is a well-established history of Central Asian people (particularly men) migrating to Russia for work, and many could be attracted to the Russian military with the offer of citizenship and high pay.
Nepal has proved another hotspot for recruiting. Deeply poor, and with a reputation of providing men for the British Army, the nation has become fertile ground for the Russian military. Claims vary widely, with the government reporting that 200 or so have joined, while opposition politicians claim the true figure is about 15,000. Independent activists claim that they’ve been contacted by 2,000 families seeking to get in touch with relatives and children who they believe are in the Russian military. The true figure appears likely to be somewhere in the mid-thousands, with government claims being much too low, while opposition reports of 15,000 too high to be taken at face value without documentation. The middling estimate is supported by the testimony of a Nepali prisoner of war serving with the Russian military, who claimed that 3,000 to 4,000 Nepalis joined up
Estimates for India are spotty at best. The Indian government claimed that between 30 and 40 Indian nationals were serving in the Russian military. This appears at odds with the sheer size of the nation, as well as interviews with a translator who worked with the Russian military; he reported that he personally oversaw the enlistment of 70 to 100 Indians and that there were many other similar recruitment centers across Russia. If we believe this translator, a conservative estimate of Indians in the Russian army would number in the hundreds. Taken together, this handful of nations has likely contributed around 10,000 recruits to the Russian military, most of them in 2023 and early 2024, when these articles were written. When we consider that there are almost certainly recruitment schemes in other countries, and that our numbers do not include most of 2024, the true number of recruits may well be closer to 20,000. These numbers are not large in an absolute sense, accounting for four to five brigades, and the quality of troops has not been elite, but modern great powers have rarely had to rely on foreigners to fill their front lines, even to this extent.
Organization of Recruiting Campaigns
There are multiple pieces of evidence indicating that many of these recruitment schemes are operated by provincial governments rather than the Kremlin. First and most blatantly, a recruiting campaign in Kazakhstan linked back to a website owned by the government of the Sakhalin Republic, a sparsely populated province in Russia’s Far East. Beyond the explicit evidence, Russia’s provinces have a strong interest in minimizing the number of men who leave to join the military. This is especially true for sparsely populated provinces like the Sakhalin Republic (whose population has declined by a full third since 1989), where losing a significant number of men may endanger the viability of underpopulated communities.
For its part, the Kremlin would likely prefer to offload recruitment duties to the extent possible, allowing it to focus fully on fighting the war. One could easily imagine an arrangement between the Kremlin and local governments whereby the local government agrees to fund and operate foreign recruiting operations, with any recruits counting toward the provincial recruiting quota. Provincial politicians and officials occupy their positions at the whim of the Kremlin and could easily be removed by means constitutional or otherwise if they fail to provide their share of manpower. At the same time, recruiting locals to fight can often prove difficult, and the high risk of casualties is a demographic hazard to the long-term outlook of less populated areas. So, a natural solution would be to recruit from abroad, and this appears to have happened.
One indication that these operations have been run by local governments, without the full resources of the Kremlin, is that many recruitment efforts have been run in a slapdash manner and in ways that endanger Russia’s international position for minimal gain. These efforts often operate through networks that recruit civilian labor, which results in criminal and fraudulent behavior.
The best example of this is India. As mentioned, Russian recruitment centers in India yielded a three-digit number of recruits, while operating as human trafficking operations. India has proven a valuable friend for the Kremlin at a time when those are few and far between. Russian oil exports to India have massively increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and New Delhi has consistently refused to publicly condemn Russia. It wouldn’t make sense, then, for the Kremlin to risk that relationship over less than a battalion’s worth of manpower. But for a small Russian province, that manpower may stave off another wave of mobilization, with all the economic and political damage that comes with it.
Another example of a small recruiting operation is Cuba, where the government claimed to have discovered and dismantled a human trafficking ring that was bringing on Cuban citizens to fight for Russia, which had apparently deceived Cubans into believing that they would be working civilian jobs. Some have questioned this narrative, pointing out that some Cubans in the Russian military and their relatives posted pictures of their service, not the kind of thing that a trafficked person would be likely to do. Additionally, reporting from the last few weeks has indicated that Cubans are still volunteering, trickling into Russia. These could be smaller operations that escaped authorities, or they could represent a deal between Russia and Cuba to rework the system in Havana’s favor in exchange for permission to recruit.
If the Cuban state is turning a blind eye to Russian recruitment, or is even getting something in return, it is understandable why it would claim otherwise. Beset by one of the worst economic crises in its history, the Cuban state is desperate for money and resources, which a manpower-hungry Kremlin might be willing to provide. On the other side, the pretense that Russian recruiting operations are occurring without the knowledge of the state may create a facade that keeps the European Union from sanctioning an already unstable Cuba. With Russia largely recruiting in poorer countries, similar covert arrangements may be present.
Motives and Funding
While the Kremlin and some people outside Russia assert that the nation has nearly endless manpower, much of the data points to difficult choices as the war drags on, with shortages only averted with ever more radical economic incentives or another round of mobilization. It would be fair to say that people have two broad motivations to join the military: patriotism or economic gain. These motivations are both present in varying degrees, but they represent the decisive factors for nearly every volunteer. With the war having raged for nearly two and a half years, it is similarly fair to say that most of those who are primarily motivated by patriotism have already joined up. Nor are there many unemployed people who will join the military because they need a job. Unemployment in Russia hit an all-time low of 2.6 percent in April. So, the largest source of soldiers will likely need to come from employed men. With the country already short of nearly five million workers, further recruitment at home will necessarily come at the cost of business efficiency, with many enterprises likely to close for lack of staff. This points to another reason foreign recruitment has proven attractive. While a Russian worker who enlists deprives the economy of labor, a foreigner who enlists has no impact on the Russian labor sector.
Nor are foreign recruits always paid the 200,000 rubles a month that a Russian private is entitled to. In deeply poor countries, much smaller sums can be attractive. One Nepali man, Sandip Thapaliya, was paid just 75,000 rubles a month. Even for those who are paid comparably, it is unclear if foreign soldiers and their families are entitled to the same payments upon injury or death. Several Indian families whose sons died in Ukraine allegedly received payment from the Russian state, but it is difficult to say whether this is common or if India’s status as a major partner led President Vladimir Putin to take this step. Wounded soldiers and families who are Russian have had trouble getting payouts, so it stands to reason that foreigners, who lack any contacts or familiarity with the Russian bureaucracy, would have even less chance of securing compensation.
By that logic, foreign troops may be substantially cheaper than Russian ones. The Nepalese soldier mentioned above was killed in Bakhmut, and all his family received was a phone call. With death payments to the families of Russian soldiers surpassing 14 million rubles, and death so common on the battlefield, the savings from foreign soldiers are likely significant.
Looking Forward
Having laid out the structural issues that make foreign troops desirable to both the central government and provincial governments and the evidence that provincial governments play an outsized role in these campaigns, what is the future of foreign troops in the Ukrainian war? In places where the presence of foreign recruiters has become a legal matter or a source of controversy, such as South Asia, efforts have likely been curtailed, or at least are operating at a lower level to avoid further bad publicity and international scrutiny. This latter is likely occurring in Cuba currently. It is very unlikely that foreign recruitment will be curtailed, though, as the provincial governments that likely run such operations have a strong incentive to continue them. And if the Russian government is preparing for the war to stretch on for years, keeping these networks operational will be useful in case a greater reliance on foreign troops becomes needed to keep the army staffed without further mobilization.
Most likely, efforts will shift to countries with lax enforcement or where officials can be more easily persuaded to look the other way. This may include countries that are allied with Russia already, or where there are active conflicts that have produced an excess of soldiers and a dearth of money. The number of foreign soldiers may serve as an indicator of how precarious the manpower situation is getting, with deeper economic and political implications within Russia. More broadly, it is indicative of the strains Russia is enduring in its effort to restore its superpower status.
Harry Stevens is a graduate of the University of Chicago who specializes in Russian affairs and defense economics and conducts research with the Center for the National Interest. He has produced Barbarossa: Apocalypse in the East, a popular history podcast, and currently works in AI.
Image: The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation via Wikimedia Commons
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