By Olha Chepil | 2024-09-20

KYIV -- The Kremlin is conducting its biggest recruitment campaign for contract military service since the start of the full-scale war.

But the compelling slogans and promises vanish as soon as the papers are signed, according to relatives whose loved ones have gone to war.

About a month ago, Svetlana, who asked to use only her first name for safety reasons and lives in the Russian city of Astrakhan, was summoned to the local enlistment office.

Upon arriving there, she was given a Russian flag and a zinc coffin containing the remains of her son, Ilya, who died in the war.

Unable to believe her son's remains were in the coffin, she decided to open it.

What she saw shocked her.

"I gave birth to a 3.5 kg boy. They returned 5.5 kg of burned bones," Svetlana told Kontur. "The hands were clenched into fists. That means he was burned alive... There was no head there at all."

The Russian Federation paid only to transport the remains home from the airport. Svetlana paid for the funeral on her own -- she bought the coffin and plot at the cemetery.

Svetlana never received documents confirming a DNA match, nor did she receive the rest of her son's remains.

"I wrote to them: where is my son's head? The person who sent the remains replied, 'If we find a solitary head without other remains, we will of course check its DNA. And if the head or skull belongs to your son, then we will send it to you, and you will bury it.'"

"After something like that, you become cynical," Svetlana said. "You are dead. You are broken. You go to hell, just hell."

"They took the most important thing in my life and gave back a pile of bones."

Completely deceived

Svetlana said she did not want her son to fight.

Ilya, who had been in prison starting in 2021 -- a year before the start of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine -- was sent to the front without his mother's knowledge in the spring of 2023.

He fought for only one week.

Svetlana received a final message from him on May 9: "Mom, I'm going on an attack."

On May 10 he was dead.

In an effort to locate her son's body, Svetlana spent her nights in various online groups scrolling through dozens of photographs of bodies of dead Russian soldiers posted anonymously.

She said she no wife or mother should ever have to go through something like that.

Ilya was never recognized as a serviceman, and his mother never received any benefits or payments after his death.

She said she feels completely deceived by the state.

"This system put you in jail. This system started a war. This system recruits you," she said. "Do you still trust the state?"

Financial incentives

To entice people to go to war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased incentives, said Olga Romanova, director of Russia Behind Bars, a charity that provides assistance to convicts and their families.

People are promised apartments, tax exemption, education, free university admission for their children, suspension of court cases and much more, she said.

And of course, huge amounts of money. In some regions of Russia, the payments have increased by 400%, she said.

"The current record amount in Moscow and the Moscow region is 5.2 million RUB (€50,240) for the first contract, in addition to all the relocation allowances," she told Kontur.

Financial incentives play the most important role in people's decisions to sign contracts, but the ideology expressed in the recruitment campaigns is just as important, analysts say.

"The advertising serves as self-justification for going to war. I need money to support my family. I need money to start a new life. Or I need money because I love my homeland. Or I'm going to the 'special military operation' because I'm a manly man, not because I want to kill," said Romanova.

"It's doublespeak."

'Buying people's loyalty'

War recruitment messages have also become more frequent on Russian state television.

Meduza reported September 5 that Channel One's talk show "Time Will Tell" is advertising contract military service, and propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has begun promoting military contract hotlines on his program.

"I constantly hear this advertising in the metro and on buses. Even on buses, the loudspeakers announce the stops and say that we invite people to sign up for military service on a contractual basis," said Anna Rapoport, a St. Petersburg resident and deputy director of research at the Museum Agency of the Leningrad region.

According to Rapoport, two months ago, a large banner hung near her home, calling for people to join the military, asserting that war is "real men's work to help their own."

"The previous partial mobilization showed how much our state struggled to cope with it, and how big opposition exists among the public," she told Kontur, referring to a call-up of about 300,000 reservists in September 2022.

"Accordingly, contract service and buying people's loyalty are now the only way to continue this military operation."

The advertising campaign has reached a new level, now extending to social media messaging platforms such as Telegram, Yandex and VKontakte, said Valeria, an activist with The Way Home (Put Domoy), an association of mobilized soldiers' relatives who are trying to secure their return to Russia.

A Russian online service that posts ads for goods and real estate recently started displaying ads trying to recruit contract soldiers to serve in Kursk province, she said.

The ads are deceptive, according to Valeria, who requested her full name be withheld.

"They will receive no veteran status, no payments, nothing in fact, because it's 'counterterrorism' there, not the 'special military operation." she told Kontur.