Mobilization in Russia for Jan. 18-20, 2026 CIT Volunteer Summary
Authorities and Legislation
The Russian government’s legislative commission endorsed a Ministry of Defense bill introducing mandatory genomic registration for volunteer fighters, civil servants, and personnel from the Interior Ministry, the Russian Armed Forces and Rosgvardia [Russian National Guard] involved in combat operations. Authorities will store the resulting data until the individual turns 100 or, in the event of death, until remains are identified, though veterans may request the destruction of their records after discharge. This legislation broadens the scope of mandatory DNA collection, which applies only to criminal suspects, administrative detainees, unidentified bodies, relatives of those missing in action, and convicts whose DNA was seized during investigation.
The government endorsed a bill protecting veterans from workplace layoffs. The measure would amend Article 179 of the Labor Code to prohibit employers from dismissing "special military operation" veterans during staff reductions if they are as qualified and productive as their colleagues. This regulation covers individuals who have returned from military service and reinstated their employment contracts, expanding previous government guarantees that preserved positions for mobilized men and contract soldiers during their deployment and for three months thereafter. The legislation is set to take effect on Sept. 1, pending final adoption.
The Agentstvo [Agency] independent media outlet calculated that since 2022, federal authorities have adopted 154 laws to support war participants and their families, measures that, among other provisions, simplify access to education, expand labor rights, provide housing benefits, and authorize loan repayment holidays and debt forgiveness.
Army Recruitment
The MoD is running an active recruitment campaign for its Unmanned Systems Forces. In a post on its Telegram channel, the ministry promised applicants contracts of at least one year, as well as guaranteed discharge upon the contract’s expiration if they choose not to sign a new one. At the same time, the ministry does not explain how such contracts could be terminated while the mobilization decree remains in force.
Recruits are also promised service exclusively in unmanned systems units, with mandatory training. Recruitment is open for UAV operators, engineers, technicians, and other specialties. Priority is given to candidates with prior military experience, drone pilots, aeromodellers, and specialists in information technology, electronics, and radio engineering. Recruitment announcements are also being published by municipal administrations on their own channels.
In the city of Omsk, a military recruitment center has also begun recruiting college students for contract military service in the unmanned systems forces. Recruitment campaigns are being conducted in educational institutions, including an automotive transport college, where a serviceman urged students interested in computer games and technology to join the "new branch of the armed forces." Those who sign a contract are promised payments of up to 500,000 rubles [$6,430] for destroying enemy targets, a reduced risk of coming under fire, and discharge upon completion of the contract without any obligation to extend it.
At the Higher School of Economics (HSE), service in the unmanned systems forces has begun to be offered to male students with Russian citizenship who are facing expulsion. Students who sign a contract are promised an academic leave of absence. They are given only a short time to decide—three days—during which the expulsion process will be suspended. HSE staff are also required to submit weekly reports with statistics on how many notifications about the option of signing a contract have been sent.
The flow of new recruits from Moscow to the war has fallen by a quarter over the past year, to 24,469 people, according to data provided to the Vyorstka media outlet by sources in the city administration. The decline became especially noticeable in the winter of 2025: in December, only 879 people signed contracts—the lowest figure since the recruitment center began operating. According to a Vyorstka source in the presidential administration, recruitment shortfalls in 2025 have been recorded nationwide, with figures far below those announced by Putin and Medvedev. A source in the Lipetsk region says the region failed to meet its recruitment KPI.
However, Vyorstka’s data are not confirmed by budget statistics. According to regional budget figures analyzed by economist Janis Kluge, recruitment rates in 2025 did not decline compared to 2024. By his estimate, 407,000 people were recruited, which is not far from the 422,704 new recruits cited by Medvedev. As Vyorstka’s sources note, however, the "quality" of recruits is deteriorating: contracts are increasingly being signed by older men, many of whom have criminal records or health problems.
Governor of the Irkutsk region Igor Kobzev has signed a decree canceling the payment of 200,000 rubles [$2,570] to mobilized soldiers for signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Now, mobilized soldiers from the Irkutsk region will receive only the federal sign-up bonus of 400,000 rubles [$5,150] upon signing a contract. Meanwhile, the region has increased the sign-up bonus for new contract soldiers who are not affiliated with the Russian army to 2.4 million rubles [$30,900] from 1 million rubles [$12,900]. Additionally, the sign-up bonus for conscripts who decide to sign a contract has recently been increased to up to 1.5 million rubles [$19,300].
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
In September 2025, the Garrison Military Court in Novosibirsk sentenced Zhasurzhon Ergashaliyev, a native of Uzbekistan, to six months of imprisonment for attempting to illegally cross the border. Considering the unserved sentence from a previous conviction, the man was sentenced to seven years and nine months in a maximum security penal colony. In April 2023, Ergashaliyev was sentenced to 11 years and eight months for drug trafficking in Chelyabinsk. While in a penal colony, he signed a contract with the MoD, received conditional release, and was deployed to the war, where he was reportedly injured. After receiving treatment in a military hospital, Ergashaliyev traveled to Novosibirsk on May 23, 2025, where he arranged for "assistance in crossing the border of the Russian Federation." On the night of May 25, FSB border service officers detained the man at the border with Kazakhstan, where he was waiting for a "guide."
The FSB officers shot and killed a 43-year-old resident of Kislovodsk during a detention. The man allegedly intended to blow up a serviceman's car in Stavropol. In a video published by the FSB, filmed from a drone, four armed law enforcement officers are seen attempting to detain the man in a forest at night. He opened fire and was killed. It is reported that a Makarov pistol, a hand grenade, and a backpack containing explosives were found at the scene of the shootout. The man had allegedly placed explosives in a cache last year on the instructions of Ukrainian intelligence services, which were later retrieved by a female student from the Krasnodar region. She was detained in December. In total, at least 77 people have been killed by theFSB during detentions since the beginning of the war.
In the Irkutsk region, an 18-year-old local resident has been detained on suspicion of an act of terror. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, scammers posing as employees of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring) first deceived the young man into transferring money to a "secure" account. Subsequently, they called him again, this time claiming to be an employee of the FSB, and stated that the funds had allegedly gone toward financing the Armed Forces of Ukraine. To avoid liability, they demanded he participate in a "special operation" to set fire to an infrastructure facility. The teenager set fire to a communications substation and proceeded to another one where he allegedly began preparing a tunnel, but he was detained by law enforcement officers while attempting to flee. The young man was sent to a pre-trial detention center.
A forensic psychiatric examination in the case of an act of terror against 14-year-old Moscow schoolboy Danila—the son of Marina Rogozhina, a participant in roundtable discussions at the State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia]—has found him to be a "victim of psychological manipulation" by fraudsters. The schoolboy had previously been accused of setting fire to the Vnukovo district administration building and a relay cabinet, spending approximately 11 months in a pre-trial detention center and being added to the registry of extremists and terrorists. According to Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia's Presidential Human Rights Council, the fraudsters deceived the boy by first posing as Ministry of Education officials and then as the FSB. Experts at the Serbsky Center concluded that the teenager did not understand the actual nature and public danger of his actions and believed he was following instructions from "government agencies," which falls under Part 3 of Article 20 of the Russian Criminal Code and excludes criminal liability. His mother subsequently sought to have the case reviewed and the investigator replaced. Ultimately, her son was released from custody to go home. Meanwhile, in similar cases involving infrastructure arson, courts regularly hand down sentences to teenagers that include substantial prison terms.
The First Western District Military Court sentenced 17-year-old Eva Bagrova to four years in prison on charges of public calls for terrorism and aiding terrorist activities. The verdict was announced back in October but only became public now. In late December 2024, the then-16-year-old girl posted photos on a school bulletin board of Russian Volunteer Corps founder Denis Kapustin and unit member Aleksey Levkin with captions reading "Distinguished Hero of Russia." The following day, Bagrova was detained and later sent to a pre-trial detention center; since March 2025, she had been under house arrest. Initially, she faced only charges of justifying terrorism, but a second charge was later added to the case.
A former employee of the Russian consulate in the city of Odesa, Andrey Malakey, is charged with participation in a terrorist organization and intended treason. According to the prosecution, starting in November 2024, Malakey corresponded with a member of the Russian Volunteer Corps on Telegram, planning to join the organization. In December, he travelled from Moscow to Mineralnye Vody, from where he was supposed to fly to Yerevan, Armenia, but was detained at the airport. A report was filed against him for petty hooliganism for allegedly using profanity in a public place. Administrative reports were filed against him twice more, after which he was sent to a pre-trial detention center on criminal charges.
The 2nd Western District Military Court sentenced Ivan Paskar to 24 years and Vladimir Golovchenko to 26 years on charges of a terrorist attack and the illegal manufacture and acquisition of explosive devices. The third defendant, Rostislav Zhuravlyov, was sentenced to 16 years in August 2025 after he pleaded guilty to the charges, while two other suspects, Yaroslava Khrestyna and Mikhail Chuprun, remain on a wanted list. According to the case materials, Khrestyna transferred explosive components from Poland to Chuprun in Lithuania, who then gave them to Paskar for delivery to Russia, where Golovchenko arrived in March 2024 to assemble and plant the device on the car of Vasily Prozorov, an ex-employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who had defected to Russia. The bomb detonated when the engine started, injuring Prozorov, who had previously stated in 2019 that he "voluntarily, for ideological reasons, assisted Russia in obtaining information about the activities of Ukrainian law enforcement" since April 2014.
A resident of Oryol was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a case involving treason and attempted sabotage. According to the prosecution, the man, whose name was not disclosed, "was experiencing financial difficulties" when he became acquainted with an individual cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence services. From October to December 2024, the defendant, in exchange for payment, painted slogans on the walls of residential buildings that investigators said constituted "incitement to end the special military operation." He was also charged with attempting to set fire to a cellular base station.
A military court sentenced 40-year-old Samara region resident Eduard Almazov to 10 years in prison on charges of participation in the activities of a terrorist organization and confidential cooperation with a foreign state. According to the FSB, Almazov established contact with Ukrainian intelligence services, attempted to join formations fighting on Ukraine’s side, painted anti-Russian slogans in crowded areas of the Samara Region, and planned to pass along the coordinates of oil storage facilities for strikes on fuel and energy infrastructure. He was detained in November 2024.
The Leningrad Regional Court has sentenced Mikhail Vzvodnov, a businessman from Vyborg, to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony on charges of treason. According to the Federal Security Service, Vzvodnov, who held a Finnish residence permit, collected information on weapons and military equipment used in the war against Ukraine on behalf of Sweden’s Security and Intelligence Service. Investigators say he stored the data at his home and prepared to transfer it through dead drops. He was detained in the spring of 2023 during what authorities described as a "dead-drop operation." The sentence was handed down in July 2025 and upheld on appeal in November.
A Moscow court has ordered the pretrial detention of Vladimir Prokopenko, a native of Ukraine and a Russian citizen, on treason charges. The specific allegations against him have not been disclosed. Prior to the opening of the criminal case, however, he was subjected to administrative arrest at least eight times starting in September 2025 on charges of petty hooliganism and the use of obscene language. Those rulings were issued by seven different courts in Moscow and the Moscow region.
Children and Militarization
A 16-year-old boy was killed after climbing inside a tank at an exhibition in Yakutsk, where he was crushed by a moving metal component.
Assistance
In Russia's constituent republic of Bashkortostan, authorities plan to allocate 25 billion rubles [$322 million] in 2026 to support participants in the war and their family members. A year earlier, 26 billion rubles were spent for the same purpose. At the same time, the republic’s budget deficit for the current year stands at 22.5 billion rubles [$289 million].
Longreads
The outlet NGS.RU has published an investigation into how employees of military draft offices collude with funeral service companies, effectively steering the relatives of killed war participants toward their services.