A Russian governor has ordered large firms in his region to shortlist employees as “candidates” for military service, in a rare push for businesses to get involved with recruitment.
The order — signed by Pavel Malkov, the governor of Ryazan, a region 130 miles southeast of Moscow — instructed companies with 150 or more workers to select their employees by September 20.
These employees would be candidates for “military service under contract” with the Russian military, the notice said. In Russia, contract military service contributes to the bulk of recruitment for the Ukraine war and is meant to be voluntary.
The new legislation, dated March 20, was reported this week by Russian independent media and open-source intelligence groups.
The order is addressed to all business entities “regardless of their form of ownership,” indicating that private and state-owned organizations are subject to the requirements.
According to Malkov’s order, businesses and institutions with 150 to 300 workers must submit two candidate employees, while those with 300 to 500 workers must designate three. Firms and entities with 500 or more workers must submit five names.
Malkov’s order did not specify penalties for failing to submit the quotas on time. His directive cited two decrees signed in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin putting the country under heightened readiness amid the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ryazan local law says businesses that obstruct those decrees could be fined up to 1 million rubles, or about $12,300.
The candidacy mandate comes as Russia has been aggressively pushing new ways to find fresh troops while taking heavy losses in Ukraine, offering large sign-up bonuses to its citizens and increasingly leaning on informal or covert overseas recruitment networks.
Moscow said that over 420,000 people signed up for military contracts last year. But the recruitment rate has been repeatedly reported to be dwindling in larger cities, where residents are now more wary of joining the brutal conflict.
The heavy military focus is likely to come at a high cost to Russia’s already struggling economy. The country is facing labor shortages, for example, that its officials have warned could reach 11 million workers by 2030.
Russia hopes to eventually grow its active-duty force to 1.5 million soldiers, with a total force of 2.38 million when including support and civilian service personnel. In 2025, it spent about 6.3% of its GDP on defense.
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