Mobilising the Margins: How Russia Harnesses the Vulnerable to Wage War in Ukraine

Since the onset of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has pursued a campaign of mobilisation that is both unconventional and politically calculated. Confronted with mounting casualties and battlefield setbacks, the Kremlin has resorted to drawing disproportionately from society’s most vulnerable classes—rural populations, ethnic minorities, convicts, the indebted, and the unemployed—rather than enforcing broad-based conscription that might provoke unrest among the urban middle class or political elite.

Here we examine the mechanisms and rationale behind Russia’s asymmetric mobilisation strategy, analyse the socio-economic composition of the troops sent to the front, and evaluate the human cost of this policy, particularly in light of Russia’s exceptionally high battlefield mortality rates.

Selective Mobilisation by Design

Vladimir Putin’s government has repeatedly declared that Russia is not at war but conducting a “special military operation”. This legal fiction has allowed the Kremlin to avoid general mobilisation for much of the conflict’s duration. Instead, Russia has used a variety of opaque or coercive means to fill the ranks without unsettling Moscow’s political equilibrium.

Key methods include:

• Targeted regional recruitment: Remote and impoverished regions such as Buryatia and Dagestan (poor, politically restless Russian regions in the Caucasus), Tuva (a southern Russian region near the border with Mongolia), and Chuvashia (a poor region on the River Volga) have seen per capita recruitment rates far higher than urban centres. Ethnic minorities, often residing far from the national political discourse, have been mobilised in large numbers.

  
  

• Prisoner conscription: The Wagner Group, followed later by the Russian Ministry of Defence itself, recruited tens of thousands of prisoners with promises of pardons and payments. Many of these men were sent into “meat wave” assaults with minimal training and high fatality rates.

  
  

• Contract baiting: Economically marginalised individuals—particularly from regions with high unemployment—have been lured with large signing bonuses, promises of salaries exceeding local norms, and vague assurances of support for their families.

  
  

• Coercion and deception: In some cases, especially in annexed Ukrainian territories such as occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, men have been forcibly conscripted or misled into signing contracts without full disclosure of their obligations.

The common theme is clear: the Kremlin’s strategy avoids mobilising men from Russia’s metropolitan centres—Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg—where the war remains unpopular and resistance to conscription could be politically destabilising.

Sacrificing the Periphery: Who Fights and Dies

The demographic composition of Russian military fatalities reflects this strategy. Independent investigative groups such as Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian Service, which compile data from open sources, have consistently found that a disproportionately large number of deaths come from peripheral regions. For example, Buryatia—home to less than 1 per cent of Russia’s population—has accounted for more than 5 per cent of publicly confirmed fatalities by some counts.

Similarly, prisoners conscripted by Wagner have suffered appalling losses. Reports from the front line and intercepted communications describe their use as expendable infantry in frontal assaults, often without adequate equipment, artillery support, or medical evacuation.

This tactic, described colloquially in Russian military slang as “zerg rush” or “meat grinder” assaults, is particularly evident in battles such as those for Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Chasiv Yar, where human wave tactics have been used to absorb Ukrainian fire, identify weak points, and overwhelm defensive positions by sheer attrition.

Mortality estimates vary, but according to the Ukrainian General Staff and independent Western intelligence sources, Russia may have suffered over 500,000 military casualties since the war began, including up to 150,000 killed. These figures suggest a sustained kill rate far higher than in any Russian conflict since World War II.

Political Calculus and Social Stability

The Kremlin’s selective mobilisation strategy is underpinned by political logic. Russia’s middle class—especially in the cities—forms a critical base for regime stability. Discontent over economic conditions, travel restrictions or conscription would threaten this base. Hence the system is designed to insulate these groups from the consequences of war.

When Russia did announce a partial mobilisation in September 2022, it sparked one of the largest waves of emigration in the post-Soviet period: over 500,000 men fled the country in the weeks that followed, seeking refuge in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Turkey. The backlash forced the Kremlin to retreat from further mass mobilisation, instead returning to its practice of regional and coercive recruitment.

Moreover the Kremlin has employed propaganda and patriotic narratives to encourage voluntary enlistment from rural regions, appealing to loyalty, masculinity and national duty. But these appeals are often underpinned by economic desperation: for many in Russia’s provinces, joining the military is one of the few routes to financial security, even if the price is death.

Long-Term Costs and Strategic Implications

This strategy of sacrificial mobilisation raises serious long-term questions for Russian society and the viability of her armed forces.

• Demographic depletion: Many of the regions supplying soldiers already faced population decline, low birth rates and emigration. The war has accelerated these trends, hollowing out communities and depleting future labour capacity.

  
  

• Veterans and wounded: Tens of thousands of disabled veterans are returning to regions without the medical or social support infrastructure to reintegrate them. The psychological and economic burdens will endure long after the war ends.

  
  

• Inequality and resentment: The visible class and ethnic disparities in mobilisation risk fostering long-term resentment among Russia’s minorities and rural poor, undermining the myth of national unity and loyalty to the state.

  
  

• Military effectiveness: The reliance on untrained, demoralised troops undermines unit cohesion and battlefield efficiency. While Russia may have manpower depth, her qualitative edge continues to erode—especially compared to Western-trained Ukrainian forces.

A War of the Poor

Russia’s approach to mobilisation in the war against Ukraine reflects a deeper authoritarian pattern: to shield the regime’s political heartland by exporting the costs of war to its economic and ethnic periphery. It is, in essence, a war waged by the poor on behalf of the powerful—a strategy that maximises short-term regime stability at the expense of long-term national cohesion and military efficacy.

While effective in avoiding domestic upheaval in the short term, this strategy is not sustainable indefinitely. The depletion of peripheral manpower, growing social fatigue, and the moral rot of sacrificing one’s most vulnerable citizens may eventually undercut even the most tightly controlled regime. Whether that day comes in months or years remains uncertain. But the human cost of Russia’s war—and the cynicism with which her people have been sent to die—will cast a long shadow over her society for decades to come.