- Russia is hoping to draft 420,000 military personnel by the end of the year, according to UK Intelligence.
- But Russia has worsening labor workforce shortages back home, one Russian survey said.
Russia's military intends to enlist 420,000 "contract personnel" by the end of 2023 despite having widespread issues in its domestic industrial workforce, according to UK intelligence.
According to a survey by the nonprofit Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, quoted by the British Ministry of Defence in its daily intelligence update on Monday, labor shortages in Russia's industry sector hit a new high of 42% in July 2023. This was up 7% from April 2023, it said.
In early September, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said 280,000 people had already been drafted, according to Reuters, which would suggest a further 140,000 are still needed by the end of the year.
The UK MOD pointed out that Medvedev's figure cannot be independently verified.
One sector facing acute shortages is the IT sector, which has seen about 100,000 IT professionals — 10% of the sector — leaving Russia in 2022, the UK MOD said.
"This shows that mobilization and conscription within Russia has worsened non-defence workforce shortages," it said.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has spurred a massive brain drain in Russia, with recent estimates putting the number of young workers who left in 2022 at 1.3 million.
According to a Russian central bank study, reported on by Russian daily Kommersant, worker availability in the first quarter of 2023 dropped to the lowest level since data collection began in 1998.
Russians may have left Russia for several reasons, including evading military mobilization or fleeing Western sanctions that have caused economic turmoil within the country, per The Washington Post.
Russia is now trying to retain some of its talent at home, in part by raising the exemption age for military recruitment for IT professionals from 27 to 30 in early September, the UK MOD update said.
Russia mobilized 300,000 troops last year, and plans to mobilize hundreds of thousands more this year.
However, the MOD also said that in the run-up to Russian presidential elections, scheduled for March 2024, authorities would likely "seek to avoid" further unpopular mobilizations.