After the war in Ukraine freezes or ends, the Russian military will begin a long-term effort to regenerate equipment and personnel. How will they recruit the next generation of professional enlisted soldiers and officers, having sustained an estimated 350,000 casualties in Ukraine since 2022? My research finds that the Russian government is already considering this challenge and has begun implementing a strategy for post-war recruiting with a coherent logic. Russia's strategy is made of three elements: offering higher wages and benefits, tightly managing public engagement and perceptions of the war to suppress bad news and limit protests and collective bargaining, and revising recruiting themes for a post-war context.
While the Kremlin may have a strategy, will enough of the Russian population want to join the military when the war is over? The answer is complex and depends on how the war ends and how it is perceived within Russia. If the high wages and social benefits currently on offer in wartime can be even partially maintained in the post-war period, with salaries that are currently double the national average, future recruiting could be more stable than Russia's adversaries might hope for. For some Russians, financial incentives alone will not be enough. The Russian military's actions at war—high-casualty tactics and poor treatment of personnel and their families—undermine three pillars of recruiting and retention that were critical to gaining the public's trust in the military over the last 15 years: perception of good order, discipline, and well-being in the military; improved service conditions; and broader public perceptions of military prestige. To offset the challenges to come, the Kremlin is revising its approach to target the next generation of recruits.…
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