By Olha Hembik | 2025-12-17

WARSAW -- They turned 18 and went to war. Not from home, and not by choice, but from behind the walls of juvenile correctional colonies. As Russia's losses mount and recruitment falters, Ukrainian officials say the Kremlin has begun funneling teenage offenders directly into combat units.

Ukrainian security officers recently recorded the arrival of 48 recruits from juvenile prisons into the 9th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, military unit 71443, RBC-Ukraine reported in November. Most of the recruits had only just reached adulthood.

The cases point to a recruitment system that prepares boys for war long before they leave state custody. Ukrainian security sources described the development as evidence of a deepening manpower crisis in Russia's war against Ukraine and a collapse of basic ethical limits in state policy.

The I Want to Live project, which tracks Russian military recruitment and surrender cases, reported that the Kremlin shows no interest in rehabilitating juvenile offenders or offering them a viable civilian future. Former prisoners are routinely sent to the front as "cannon fodder."

No mobilization declared

Russia continues to fight the war without declaring open mobilization.

I Want to Live wrote on their Telegram channel in November that the Kremlin has already "scooped up all the convicts from prisons and the poor from the remote regions," then expanded recruitment to "the poor from all over the world and begging for soldiers from the DPRK." When those measures failed, the project reported, "it has come to the point of recruiting… juvenile delinquents."

Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, told 24 Kanal that Russia recruits at least 35,000 new soldiers each month. By September 1, about 280,000 contract soldiers had been enlisted since the start of the year.

Despite those figures, Russian recruitment is slowing.

Andrey Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, said in September that the strain is visible in quarterly data.

In the second quarter of 2025, 37,900 people signed military contracts. In the same period in 2024, 92,800 Russians were mobilized -- more than twice as many.

Front-line testimony suggests coercion has become a routine tool.

Vladimir, a first sergeant with the call sign Maly in a reconnaissance platoon of Ukraine's 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade "Kholodnyi Yar," said captured Russian soldiers describe a recruitment process far removed from official narratives.

Russian recruiters increasingly target people with past or ongoing legal problems who are registered with law enforcement, Vladimir told Kontur. Threats and fabricated cases are used to force contracts.

"On the Bakhmut front, a contract soldier was captured and threatened with criminal charges and punishment for illegal possession of gunpowder," Vladimir said. The soldier told Ukrainian forces the substance had been planted during a search of his home. He agreed to join the war to avoid prosecution.

Mobilization pool

The Kremlin is building a longer-term manpower reserve through youth militarization. Across Russia, children in beige uniforms and red berets are being enrolled en masse in the Youth Army, a state-run military-patriotic movement presented as civic education.

More than 1.8 million children have passed through the program nationwide. As of May 2025, more than 120,000 Youth Army graduates were serving in the Russian armed forces and other security agencies, according to a November BBC report.

On November 22, the organization held its largest induction ceremony of the year in Kronstadt, where 600 schoolchildren took an oath of allegiance to the Fatherland.

The program extends into occupied Ukrainian territories. Youth Army representatives hold school presentations in which children are openly described as a future "mobilization pool" for Russian security agencies.

Save Ukraine, a nonprofit that works to repatriate Ukrainian children from occupied territories and Russia, reported that 1,026 children have been returned so far.

Marina Ostapenko, a spokesperson for the organization, said 70% of those children were pressured at school by Russian service members or intelligence officers to consider signing contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense.

"Forty percent of all boys rescued over the past year received draft notices for the Russian army, or their friends received draft notices," Ostapenko told Kontur.

Walking in formation

There are 180 Youth Army units operating in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, BBC reported. Journalists analyzing Telegram posts found that the organization held at least 1,275 events in occupied Donbas between January and August this year. Eighty-four percent focused on war or military service.

During these events, children were trained to march and move in formation. They were also instructed in handling weapons, including the Utyos heavy machine gun, the Shmel thermobaric launcher and fragmentation grenades. Some sessions reportedly included training on "reprogramming" Starlink systems.

"Unfortunately, there is evidence that hundreds of Ukrainian teenagers who studied in Donbas schools were mobilized into the Russian army after the occupation," said Mykola Kuleba, co-founder of Save Ukraine and Ukraine's presidential commissioner for children's rights from 2014 to 2021.

Kuleba told Kontur that some of those teenagers have since been identified among Russian prisoners of war. The number killed remains unknown.

On October 30, Ukraine's National Police announced criminal cases against the head of the Youth Army's regional headquarters in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and six local unit leaders, accusing them of militarizing Ukrainian children.

Save Ukraine reported that more than 80% of returned children said they were subjected to discriminatory or degrading treatment because of their Ukrainian identity. Activists say the pattern mirrors the fate of teenage offenders sent from prisons to the front: childhood replaced by coercion and civilian life by a system that treats young people as expendable manpower.