January 11, 2025: The war in Ukraine has cost the Russian military over a million soldiers dead, disabled or fled the country. Several million more military age men have left the country or gone into hiding while still in Russia. There are labor shortages everywhere. Employers often cooperate with their military age employees when the police or military recovery teams come looking for men to mobilize into the army. Russian men know that military service is a virtual death sentence. If you have the money, you can bribe your way into a non-combat job. The Russian economy is a mess and few families can afford bribes.

In desperation the government is seeking to mobilize over 100,000 men in prisons. The convicts are granted pardons, freed and join the military. If they desert, the pardon is revoked and warrants are issued for the arrest of the reluctant and faithless soldiers. Popular attitudes towards the use of pardons to get criminals to serve in the military are horrifying to parents of men with no criminal record. The pardoned criminals are seen as unreliable and dangerous to their fellow soldiers

For the military the situation is desperate, as the number of men willing to fight continues to dwindle. This is not a new problem, in 2023 there was growing opposition to conscription and voluntary enlistment. This has led to lowering of standards of those mobilized into the military. The standards could only be lowered so far before the number of partially fit men now subject to conscription or mobilization into the military reaches the point where the unfit outnumber the fit and the medical expenses for the partially fit men becomes more than Russia can afford. Normally, men with HIV, Covid19, poor vision, diabetes, cancer and susceptibility to strokes were not taken into the military. Then they were and that meant more medical expenses for the military and problems finding useful work for the partially fit in the armed forces.

Many healthy Russian military age men have found ways to avoid military service, including obtaining false documents about their medical condition, bribes to conscription or mobilization authorities or simply illegally leaving the country. With partially fit men now eligible, the bribes and illegal migration will continue as will popular opposition by families of men being taken into the military. This widespread opposition is something the government cannot ignore indefinitely.

Meanwhile the government continued making large cash payments to non-criminal men who would join. That appealed to men from rural areas, where incomes were lower. In the cities and urban areas employees received higher pay and men there were opposed to trading their comfortable lives for life in the military.

Initially the government insisted that there was no war for these men to be sent into. Ukraine was described as a pacification of a region that was once part of Russia. That excuse lost its credibility as the number of Russians killed or disabled in Ukraine approached 300,000. Taking partially fit men is not only more expensive in terms of medical costs, but it means more families of partially fit men will openly oppose these changes. Even if most of the partially fit men are not sent into combat, non-combat military jobs can be strenuous and many partially fit recruits will not be able to handle it. The government has a hard time justifying this and, as more of the partially fit escalate to totally unfit while in the military, their families will grow angrier at the government. This cannot be ignored because Russia ceased being a dictatorship in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. The new, somewhat democratic, Russian government learned to pay more attention to public opinion. This resulted in long demanded changes to conscription and the conditions of military service. Conscripts now serve only one year and the new laws prohibit them from being sent to fight in a foreign war.

Russia then proclaimed that Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were not involved in a war but a necessary effort to fight NATO aggression. This explanation was not popular but tolerated. That has changed as more Russian soldiers died in Ukraine. The invasion failed while losses in weapons and manpower were larger than expected and continue to get worse. Dealing with that problem by taking partially fit men into the military is seen as a desperate measure that will only increase Russian losses in personnel and money spent on death benefits for the families of soldiers allegedly killed as well as a growing increase in medical costs for wounded or disabled soldiers. Taking the partially fit made this worse. Russian popular opposition to the war and the government are also increasing, something that Russian politicians are forced to deal with and having a difficult time handling.