First fact. In Russia there have been more frequent compliance checks regarding migration legislation. The migration authorities organise raids to check migrants’ documents. Recently, they even broke into one of the mosques during prayer, which caused a wave of indignation. This resulted in street protests.
Second fact. In the Russian town of Volgograd, they noticed an Uzbek advertisement for service to the Russian Army. In the General Staff reports of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a message appeared that, the Russians had brought Uzbeks to Mariupol, allegedly for construction work but once there, they confiscated their documents and mobilized them as volunteers.
Third fact. The Russian government has simplified the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for those people serving in the Russian army.
All these facts create one puzzle of the Russian policy which according to the Russia Government’s plan, should compensate the occupying army for the numerous personnel losses during the war in Ukraine. But will they able to achieve this?
24/02/2022 – A large scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian Troops began.
The Russian’s plan a ‘Blitzkrieg’, that Ukraine should fall in a few days.
So the Russian Army Divisions, that advanced in February, were not prepared for a prolonged war. There were even incidents, where Russian marching columns and tactical combat groups were supplemented by conscripts.
However, the Ukrainians showed fierce resistance and Russia changed its tactics.
On September 21, 2022, Putin announced mobilization. Mobilization plans were established. Quite a significant number of those mobilized were “found” in the so-called national autonomies of Russia. That is, in those autonomies where ancient ethnic peoples, now enslaved by Russia, live. It was these peoples who suffered the most human losses during the so-called “SWO”. So, for example, more people died from the small population of the Republic of Buryatia than from the densely populated Moscow region.
The losses for Russians were so serious that the Kremlin even banned local authorities from publishing obituaries in the media. And only researchers of Russian losses through personal pages of social networks could convey to the Russians the real statistics of the dead representatives of their army.
Moscow also obliged governors and local authorities to create units, so-called “national battalions”, in each subject of the Russian Federation. One such unit called “Alga”, consisting mainly of ethnic Tatars, was almost completely destroyed during one of the senseless attacks near the Ukrainian city of Vugledar. The video shot by a Ukrainian drone, on which untrained drivers of combat vehicles crush their infantry, was widely distributed by information resources.
Accordingly, local Russian authorities began to set various types of surcharges in order to report to the Kremlin about a significant number of mobilized mercenaries from its administrative territory.
For example, the record for payments was set by the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia. There, the representatives of the local occupation authorities established the highest “incentives” – whoever goes to fight in the ranks of the Yakut battalion as part of the Russian army, in addition to a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles, can also receive a one-time “increase” in the amount of 800,000 rubles. For Russians, this is simply a colossal amount.
But even such measures did not help the Russian Federation to equip its army with the required number of personnel. The largest Ukrainian counteroffensives, which took place on the southern right bank of the Dnieper and in the Kharkiv region, happened precisely because the Russian units that suffered losses were not replenished. Mobilized as part of these Russian units were not properly prepared and trained, they did not have modern weapons. Even then and now (with the next counteroffensive of Ukraine), military experts note the significant superiority of Ukrainians in precision artillery, which, of course, led to panic among Russians in certain areas of the front, as well as the appearance of public appeals by Russian mobilized to the top military leadership.
Now the Internet is full of numerous appeals from mothers, wives, and relatives of Russian mobilized soldiers, who complain that their soldiers have been abandoned by their command, that they do not have adequate ammunition, supplies, and military ammunition. That they suffer from shelling by Ukrainian artillery, and Russian artillery does little to respond to Ukrainian attacks. And that they bear great losses.
Therefore, in order to replenish its army, Russia began to pay attention to the citizens of other countries who are on its territory – labour migrants.
There are several million of them in Russia. 90% come from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan… Labour migrants from these republics mostly perform unskilled work. They work as cleaners, in housing and operating organizations, drivers, construction workers, etc. Sometimes even in large companies, for example in the oil and gas sector in oil and gas fields. After all, the previously inflated and fuelled by petrodollars Russian economy needed labour, and the Russians themselves were not particularly used to working, so they recruited people from Central Asia.
Most of these labour migrants were limited in their labour rights to one degree or another. Representatives of the Russian authorities at any moment could “throw them out”, deport them for the slightest violations. There were numerous situations when migrant workers were not paid the money promised them. In fact, it is a disenfranchised labour force that came to Russia in search of a better life.
And now, Russia is using this illegal workforce as part of its military campaign in Ukraine.
At the very beginning of the so-called “SWO”, isolated cases were recorded when representatives of Central Asian republics were used in Russian military units. Some of them were captured by Ukrainians. Some even managed to commit serious crimes while in the ranks of the Russian army. Thus, Russian soldiers were shot by two citizens of Tajikistan at the training ground of the Western Military District in the Belgorod Region. “During the fire training of a class of volunteers, preparing for a special operation, terrorists opened fire on the personnel of the unit with small arms. 11 people died, 15 were hospitalized with injuries of varying degrees of severity. Two terrorists were destroyed by retaliatory fire,” stated the official statement of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.
So, what makes migrant workers from Central Asian countries join the Russian army? First of all, money. A contractor’s salary is much higher than what they can get in the civilian sector. However, high wages did not encourage labour migrants to massively sign contracts with units of the Russian armed forces. So the Kremlin began to act not only with the “gingerbread” method, but also with the “whip”. First, they get the “gingerbread” in the form of Russian citizenship and a high salary. Russia has promised that each labour migrant, who goes to fight in the so-called “SVO” will be able to obtain Russian citizenship after a certain period of time, that is, they will have the same equal rights as a Russian citizen.
Then the Kremlin used the “whip”. What is this and how exactly is it used? Labour migrants in Russia often have an uncertain status. Instead, the authorities have punitive units in each section of the federation called the “migration service”. This is a full-fledged law enforcement agency that often conducts raids on so-called “illegals”. Presently, the cases of such raids have become more frequent in the Russian Federation. Foreigners are detained en masse, their status is ascertained, and they are tested in order to put them in a situation where they violate the law of Russian citizenship. Then they try to blackmail the labour migrants. Some are blackmailed with a real term of imprisonment, some with deportation along with their family. In this way, Russia actually forces “illegals” to sign a contract with the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
How all this will affect the composition and effectiveness of the Russian army – we will see later. But we can already draw one conclusion: the replenishment of human resources of the Russian army due to the huge losses of this resource in the war in Ukraine is a huge problem for the armed forces of the Russian Federation. The Kremlin is ready to take any steps to solve this problem.
How can we counteract this? What needs to be done to prevent Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz from becoming cannon fodder for the Russian army?
First of all, it is a task for Ukrainian diplomacy and the Ukrainian authorities to conduct a broad information campaign in countries that supply Russia with labour migrants, so that the latter do not sign contracts with the armed forces of the Russian Federation. That migrant workers do not fall for the Russian blackmail offer. That they return to their countries. Because Russia will not stop. Even if they refuse to join the ranks of the Russian armed forces, we do not rule out that labour migrants will be driven to the front by force, as is currently happening with the Russian mobilized.
How quickly the Ukrainian army will break the backbone of the Russian military monster depends on how effectively this task will be performed.
Oleh Medunytsia, Head of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Banderites)
