The Russian military intends to recruit 420,000 contract personnel by the end of 2023. On 3 September 2023, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dimitry Medvedev stated that so far 280,000 personnel had been recruited. These numbers cannot be independently verified. Russia’s conscription continues to have negative effects on its industry workforce. The Yegor Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy found that Russia’s industry shortage of workers reached a new high of 42% for July 2023, 7% higher from April 2023.
In contrast to conscription efforts elsewhere, in the IT sector Russia has taken steps to preserve the workforce. This likely highlights the particularly acute shortages in the sector after about 100,000 IT workers left Russia in 2022. This equates to 10% of the IT sector workforce. On 4 September 2023, President Putin signed a decree to increase the exemption age of military recruitment for IT professionals from 27 to 30.
This shows that mobilisation and conscription within Russia has worsened non-defence workforce shortages. In the run-up to the Russian presidential elections scheduled for March 2024, Russian authorities will likely seek to avoid further unpopular mobilisations.
The Russians are massively misinformed, still I find it hard to feel sorry for them. I think they want the propaganda to be true, so they choose to believe it.
There was no overhanging threat from NATO, they were not under attack anywhere, they 100% exclusively themselves chose to start this war. And the ridiculous laws and regulations around not making any criticism of Putin, the war or the military, should tell everybody something isn’t right.
I also saw an influencer claim this was the hardest time for Russia ever, because they don’t have any friends. There are many things that should show the Russians that this is wrong, yet most of them continue to support Putin! And the calls for using nukes on London and Ukraine and cheering all sorts of atrocities is sickening.
Russia will need an awakening like Germany had after WW2, but I suspect they’ll never get it, because Russia will not be conquered, and they will continue to play victim, despite having zero basis for it. To me it seems Russia will be lost to extremism for many decades, even after this is over.
Yeah, agreed. I worry about the future of Russia for their sake, but even more for everyone else.