The serfdom of Artamonov and Malkov: how regional leaders secure their own safety by forcing people to go to the front

The Kremlin has issued governors with monthly quotas for supplying contract soldiers, with new evidence continuing to surface.

The career future of the governors depends on meeting this plan, so they stop at nothing. Recently, our project reported how the head of the Lipetsk region, Igor Artamonov (a friend of Gref and former deputy chairman of Sberbank), began personally visiting local penal colonies and, in the style of Yevgeny Prigozhin, literally forced convicts to sign contracts for deployment to the war.

At the time, a source explained this by saying that the region was falling short of the recruitment targets sent from Moscow, and Artamonov decided to personally take charge of the recruitment drive, as he plans to take a federal position in the fall — and failing to meet the plan jeopardizes his move to the capital.

Now there is new confirmation of the existence of contract soldier recruitment targets from Moscow. The governor of the Ryazan region, Pavel Malkov, signed a decree "On the selection of candidates for military service." In the text, the governor "sets targets" for companies to send their employees to the army.

For enterprises with between 150 and 300 employees, the "quota" is two people; for companies with up to 500 workers — three; for enterprises with more than 500 employees — five.