How Russia tries to recruit women into war by promising to write off their debt

In spring 2023, the Russian Defence Ministry reported that at least 1,100 Russian women had gone to fight in Ukraine, and that at least 52 had been killed. No official figures have been released since. Russian women are recruited in waves: according to the independent outlet Vot Tak, female quotas fill up fast regardless of region, as recruiters can barely keep up with the demand. The military seeks out women at universities, colleges, and prisons; through the online state services portal Gosuslugi and at local recruitment offices; and even via cold calls and posters.

Valentina is a 25-year-old who lives in Moscow and is currently unemployed. With a high school diploma her only qualification, she wanted to enrol in a state-run design course to learn a new skill, so she submitted an application through the Gosuslugi state services portal. However, it turned out that the course required a university degree, and her application was rejected.

“I figured, fine, I don’t qualify, whatever. Then people started calling me every other day, for a week or two. They would ask if I’d signed up for military courses; I say no. Then they’d call again and ask if I wanted to sign a [military] contract. I kept refusing,” Valentina recalls.

She started wondering how they’d even got her number.

“I realised it must be connected to the course somehow, since I hadn’t given my contact details out anywhere else. Probably because the course was run by the state,” she says.

Viktoria, a 26-year-old also from Moscow, is actively job-hunting for a position in business management. Her resume includes stints as a branch director for a major mobile carrier, the head of a network of package pickup points, an HR partner in a sales department, and a business assistant. For the past month, she’s been answering all calls from unknown numbers so as not to miss a job interview. On one of these calls, someone offered to “sign her up for a contract.”

“They called, said my full name, and said, ‘We’re calling about contract service.’ The first time, I was stunned. I asked what they meant, and they hung up,” Viktoria recalls.

But the calls didn’t stop.

“The second time they called, they introduced themselves again, said they’d found my resume on HeadHunter, and asked if I was interested in contract work,” she recalls. “Naturally, I asked what kind of contract work. They explained it was a posting to the new [annexed] border territories. I asked what the job actually involved. They said it was military contract service.”

A little later, she received a message through Gosuslugi, supposedly from bailiffs, ordering her to appear for a meeting to work out a repayment schedule. Viktoria did have an outstanding debt — just under 100,000 rubles (€990).

“Early Monday morning I got this strange message on Gosuslugi saying that if I didn’t show up to the bailiffs’ office within three days by 3pm, there would be consequences — supposedly for evading my debt. My debt is 90,000 rubles; everything else I owed had long since been paid off,” she explained.

When she arrived, Viktoria found dozens of women in the hallway, some with small children. All of them appeared to be between 20 and 35 years old. Everyone she spoke to had received the same letter, from the same bailiff, with the same appointment time.

“We queued up and went in one by one, into an office with a door that didn’t shut properly, so you could hear from the hallway what was being said inside,” she said. “It was about signing a contract: sign up, and we’ll wipe out your debt. There were women in there with debts of half a million rubles or more — easier to pressure.”

At one point, Viktoria said, she started to get scared after another woman suggested they might all be detained or forcibly transported somewhere if they refused. “And I’m standing there with my measly 90,000, thinking, how the hell did I even end up here, how did my life come to this?” Viktoria recalls.

According to her, the bailiffs told the women who showed interest that they’d be working either in the rear or as drone operators.

When it was Viktoria’s turn, she got the same pitch as everyone else:

“If I sign the contract right there, my debt gets wiped immediately, and I won't owe the state, the banks, the bailiffs — anyone — anything,” she said.

After they explained the offer, the recruiters asked how interested Viktoria was. “I batted my eyelashes and said, you know, I value my life a little more than that,” she said. “This is completely absurd, I’d rather file for bankruptcy. I actually argued with them a bit — I couldn’t believe they’d dare offer something like that for such a small debt, and that they had the nerve to try to scare me into it.”

Women in Russia’s regions have received similar offers. A woman named Svetlana Sofronescu described her experience in the comments under an Instagram post: “I had a 100,000-ruble loan debt. I’m 55, I’m a woman, I’ve partially lost some organs and my spine is falling apart. For two years they hounded me with calls and messages. They kept pushing, rudely, for me to sign a contract for the war, until I paid [the debt] off.”

Maria, from Vladivostok, shared her story on Instagram as well. “In late February I got a notification on Gosuslugi telling me to come see the bailiffs,” she said.

“I racked my brain — I couldn’t find any reason for it. … I showed up on the appointed day, walked in, and asked, why exactly was I called in?”

“The bailiff starts talking about some court case and says I’m the defendant, that I have an ‘intangible debt to the country’ tied to this case. And shoves a contract at me,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t signing anything, wished him a good day, and walked off into the sunset.”