Russia Turns Migrant Medical Checks Into Recruitment Pressure

Russia is tightening syphilis-related health checks on migrants into a fresh instrument of pressure, steering them toward contracts with its military.

This was reported by Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service on its official website on September 9. The service tied the expanded checks directly to Russia's recruitment drive, which is straining under heavy battlefield losses.

Stricter medical control means more certificates, more inspections, and more grounds to deny migrants their residency and work documents, the agency noted. Made dependent on a single official and cornered by extra checks, the migrant is then offered a way out: a contract with the Defense Ministry, the service indicated.

Those who resist can face an added threat: criminal prosecution under Article 121 of Russia's Criminal Code. The statute covers the act of infecting another person with a venereal disease.

The pretext is a documented rise in infections. Russia's consumer-safety agency, Rospotrebnadzor, recorded a 33.9% increase in syphilis cases in Moscow last year, the report stated.

The capital's rate now runs 3.8 times higher than in other Russian regions, while the nationwide incidence has climbed by 63%. Migrants account for roughly 80% of Moscow's detected cases, though infections among local residents also rose 30%, the agency added.

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Regional figures may be understated because of weak diagnostics. In the first half of this year, detected cases rose 20% in the Novosibirsk region and 28.9% in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.

For Russia's military commissars, the campaign serves as another administrative tool amid a recruitment drive that cannot keep pace with its losses, the service assessed.

The intelligence service warned that the health push is unlikely to improve Russia's own figures either. Under formal controls, poor diagnostics, and a market in paid medical certificates, official statistics may stay far rosier than reality, the report emphasized.

The reliance on administrative leverage to fill contract ranks is already documented.

Earlier this year, a Moldovan citizen, Viktor Tabyrtsa, was declared an illegal resident, fined, and placed in a migrant detention facility, where he was offered a choice between deportation and a military contract.

He enlisted despite being blind in one eye, reached the front within weeks, and was killed in Ukraine's Kharkiv region less than two months later.

At least 857 Moldovan citizens have been drawn into the war this way, 81 of them confirmed killed, while more than 28,000 foreigners have signed contracts to serve in the Russian military.

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