Russia Runs Out of Prison Recruits and Turns to University Students Amid Mounting Losses

Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project has published a list of 1,059 Russian students allegedly recruited by the Russian Defense Ministry directly from universities, as Moscow looks for new manpower to replace battlefield losses on June 3.

The project, run by Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said that Russian military recruiters and enlistment officers are now visiting universities to recruit young men who were in high school only recently.

“In the fifth year of Russia’s invasion, agitators and military enlistment officers are walking through Russian universities to recruit yesterday’s schoolchildren for war. Prison inmates have almost run out, so now they have to send children to the front. Of course, recruiters do not say why the ‘second army in the world’ suddenly needs to travel around universities in the middle of the academic year and tell fairy tales about service in UAV units just to somehow replenish the army’s losses,” the project said.

According to “I Want to Live,” more than half of the names on the published list are first- and second-year students. Around 80% of those listed are young men aged 18 to 21 who, the project said, were recently preparing for exams and are now being prepared for deployment into what it called Ukraine’s “kill zone.”

The project said Russian command has already lost at least 7,500 men from this age group in assault operations.

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“Clever major-rank officers from local military enlistment offices do not send their own children into the meat grinder, but deceiving other people’s children is routine for them. Well, we will see in a year or two how many people from this list end up in the databases of the dead,” “I Want to Live” added.

The publication points to growing pressure on Russia’s recruitment system as Moscow continues trying to sustain manpower for its war against Ukraine. After relying heavily on prison recruitment and financial incentives, Russian authorities are now increasingly targeting young students with promises of specialized service, including in drone units.

Ukraine says the campaign reflects the scale of Russian losses and the need to replace troops used in high-casualty assault operations along the front.

In addition, Russia is expanding its military recruitment drive to female students as it struggles to find enough contract soldiers for its war against Ukraine.

Russian human rights defenders documented at least five young women signing wartime contracts at the Kuzovatovo technical college in the Ulyanovsk region.

Earlier, reports emerged that Russia was deliberately reducing access to higher education in the humanities and social sciences while expanding benefits for those connected to its war effort against Ukraine.

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