Some do it for the money; others for the motherland. Still others because they “just don’t have anything else to do.”
Whatever their motivation, an unknown number of Siberia’s homeless have signed contracts to fight in Ukraine, just as Moscow, seeking to avoid another politically fraught mobilization, struggles to meet its manpower needs, which have now been boosted by a three-week-long Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region.
The Defense Ministry reported that about 190,000 men have signed contracts to join the military this year. Earlier this year, Russia adopted a law creating favorable conditions for criminal suspects and convicts to have their cases suspended or their records expunged if they volunteer to fight. Additionally, sources tell RFE/RL’s Siberia.Realities, officials have been actively seeking new soldiers in homeless shelters across Siberia and the Far East.
The recruitment campaign appears to occur sporadically, homeless shelter volunteers and staff told RFE/RL.
During Russia’s partial military mobilization in September 2022,
international and independent Russian media reported that police and the military were targeting men in shelters for recruitment.
Such efforts, apparently, have continued sporadically since. A female volunteer at a shelter in the suburbs of Angarsk, an industrial city in the Irkutsk region, said that in 2023 recruiters “came to us almost every month with flyers urging people to sign contracts.”
“Of course, these fools were seduced [by the contract pay],” she said, referring to the shelter’s homeless residents. RFE/RL conceals the identities of its sources in Russia for their protection.
A flyer posted on the website of a village administration in the Irkutsk region offers healthy adult males a onetime payment of 400,000 rubles ($4,388) to sign up, as well as monthly payments of 210,000 rubles ($2,304) and other benefits. Extending a contract beyond one year brings an extra 195,000 ruble ($2,139) bonus.
That means a yearlong contract, if honored, could provide over 2.9 million rubles ($32,000), which is more than 72 times the 2022 median wage reported by Russia’s official statistics agency, Rosstat. In addition, the offer promises “the opportunity to solve housing problems” and “guaranteed employment after the contract expires.”
'No One Comes Back Alive'
Two regular residents of a large homeless shelter in the Irkutsk region told the organization’s founder recently that they had signed contracts because they needed money “to solve [their] housing problem” after their wives kicked them out for excessive drinking. The men hoped the war would eventually enable them to get mortgages for homes of their own, the founder said.
The shelter volunteer from the Angarsk suburbs said, however, that the homeless, who “usually are addicts,” don’t fully understand that they are gambling with their lives.
“[T]hey believe that it’s possible to return from the war,” she said. “And they don’t grasp that, aside from the first guys [who signed six-month contracts in 2022], no one has come back alive.”
Russia has not released its war casualty figures since September 2022. The U.S. government estimated in June that more than 350,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since February 2022, while Ukraine claims nearly 579, 500 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.
'Squandered All The Money'
One homeless shelter volunteer who spoke with RFE/RL said that, out of more than 50 homeless men who have disappeared from her shelter since the summer of 2022 -- many as recruits, she assumed -- only two have returned, both without money.
“The rest…God willing, they got stranded on the way [to fight], drinking up their earnings,” the volunteer said. “Most likely, they’re already dead.”
A volunteer at another suburban Angarsk shelter recounted that a former resident called to say that only he and one other soldier had survived out of his company of 50 men. He told the volunteer that, after he had refused to serve as “cannon fodder,” he was put into a punishment pit -- an impromptu prison for soldiers in cellars or holes in the ground.
He did not respond when shelter staff called him back, the volunteer said.
None of the volunteers who spoke with RFE/RL knew of any cases of a homeless person returning from Ukraine to a “normal” life or who had used their military earnings to buy a residence.
The founder of the Irkutsk region shelter recounted that one homeless man, an alcoholic, signed a contract in 2023, fought for six months, received a medal for saving a fellow soldier, but recently returned to the shelter.
The war had “really changed” the man, but without improving his situation in life, the shelter founder continued.
“[H]e drank a lot and squandered all the money that he’d brought back from the war,” the founder said.
Although nonprofits assist veterans transitioning back into civilian life, there are no programs that specifically address the needs of formerly homeless veterans returning from Ukraine.
The Irkutsk region shelter founder believes that, during the first two years of the war, homeless men often signed contracts to improve their standing in society. In addition to wanting money, some went to “defend the motherland” and others because they lacked a “goal in life,” he said.
But now, he added, they understand that serving in Ukraine does not lead to any “particular respect” for them.
'How Can You Refuse?'
In a video posted on his official Telegram channel on July 9, the mayor of the city of Irkutsk, Pavel Berezovsky, denied that any of the homeless in his city had fought in Ukraine.
“Some of them claim they fought to get people to feel sorry for them,” he said.
A few thousand kilometers to the northeast, in the Sakha-Yakutia region, officials used military recruitment as one of several measures to remove the homeless from the streets of Yakutsk before the city hosted the Children of Asia international sports tournament in late June, the local news site SakhaDay reported.
At a May charitable event for the homeless and underprivileged, Sakha-Yakutia’s ombudswoman, Sardana Guryeva, whose office collaborated on Yakutsk’s roundup of the homeless, urged attendees to follow the example of 19 homeless men who had signed up to fight in Ukraine in 2023.
“You’re a patriot,” she told a group of homeless men at a May event called Change Your Life, according to SakhaDay. “How can you refuse to help your country in its hour of need?”
