While there are no official statements from Russia, the Kremlin may have been surprised by the losses during the war. Now Putin is looking for officials.
Anyone looking for a job on online job portals in Russia should not be able to avoid the numerous advertisements with which Russian army personnel must be recruited. The roles and experience required are diverse: from simple machine gunners to higher positions, the Kremlin seems to be looking for reinforcements in almost every branch of the army, as reported by “Bild”.
War in Ukraine LIVE: Meeting with Putin – Zelensky adviser attacks chancellor
“Great Tragedy”
The flurry of announcements should be yet another indication that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin did not expect such high losses from the Russian side by invading Ukraine. More recently, the Kremlin officially spoke of around 1,350 dead Russian soldiers, while Ukraine speaks of nearly 20,000 dead Russians. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov also described the Russian side’s “significant losses” as a “major tragedy” last week.
Thousands of contract soldiers must already be fighting for the Russian government. According to the BBC, almost 400,000 contract soldiers were deployed to the Russian army in 2020. The search for suitable candidates has also been done in the past through job portals, but the number of advertised vacancies has increased enormously since the end of February. . Only on the portal “Superjob” 500 jobs are advertised that lead to the website of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. The start date for all work was April 13, but the date is being pushed back all the time.
The Russian army is looking for reinforcements on various job portals.Screenshot/Superjob/HH.ru
Ten days after application in the war zone
A BBC journalist took the self-test and pretended to be a 25-year-old student who could drive an armored vehicle and would have no problem fighting in Ukraine soon. Potential employers quickly asked for details and invited the alleged young man for an interview. Others have already reported over the phone how quickly the imagined candidate would be in the war zone and where exactly he would be sent. “Within ten to 15 days you will be formalized as a contract soldier and go directly to the war zone. A short-term contract lasts three to six months a year”, he said, for example, in one of these “candidacy interviews”. . .
The requirements for wanted soldiers are very low. Several advertisements only require nine years of schooling, while, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, at least eleven years of schooling is normally required to join the military. As far as pay is concerned, the discrepancy between individual advertisements is large: while most simple positions are paid the equivalent of around 330 to 560 euros per month, salaries for higher positions are up to 2,350 euros per month.
“If you are tired of changing jobs in search of better wages and conditions, if you want to live in your own apartment without paying a ruble, then you absolutely must get a job with us,” reads an advertisement for recruiting soldiers in the Russian city of Ryazan. Advertisers offered even more money to the BBC journalist who performed the self-experiment if she served in Ukraine.
20 minutes browsing account time 16.04.2022, 10:11 | Date: 04.16.2022, 10:11