In January, the “Center for National Resistance” published figures on the “contract” filling of the aggressor’s army with cannon fodder from the occupied territories in 2024.
The figures were provided at the end of the year and amount to more than 330 people (135% of the “plan”) in the Zaporizhzhia region, more than 260 people in the Kherson region (105% of the “plan”), more than 3,150 people in the Donetsk region (105% of the “plan”), about 2,600 people in the Luhansk region (90% of the “plan”), about 640 people in Sevastopol (85% of the “plan”) and more than 2,550 people in the AR of Crimea (80% of the “plan”).
The “Center” itself indicates that by the end of 2024 the “plan” for Crimea, obviously amounting to 3,200 Crimeans and 750 Sevastopol residents, will probably be “fulfilled”, and according to our data, this is what happened. At the same time, probably about 660 residents of the peninsula were criminally recruited from places of unfreedom and up to 300 were recruited by the aggressor as defendants in “general criminal offenses” before the “trial”.
This figure is comparable with the figures for the “autumn and spring drafts” on the peninsula, where the occupiers gathered 5,500 people. What part of the “conscripts” turned into “contract soldiers” is not exactly known, but this figure is clearly significant.
For example, the relatively small “plan” for the occupied mainland South of Ukraine is explained both by the mass evasion and flight of the population from the frontline zone, and by the fact that the first “draft” was carried out by the occupiers there in the fall of 2024 and they are obviously planning to transfer this “cannon fodder” to “contract soldiers” already in 2025.
“Center” cites the fact that we described earlier, the aggressor increased the one-time “federal payment” to “contract soldiers” in October from 200 to 400 thousand rubles and the same increase in the “regional payment” in Crimea and Sevastopol.
However, as we wrote, in neighboring regions of Russia the “regional payment” was raised significantly higher in the fall, and therefore, so that the Crimean “cannon fodder” does not “flow” to Rostov and Krasnodar, the Crimean collaborators additionally promise all new soldiers of the aggressor “land plots”.
Apparently for this purpose, the “Crimean Prime Minister” Gotsanyuk “pleased” the population at the end of December by saying that 4900 such plots have allegedly already been “allocated” for previous batches of “cannon fodder” in the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
And in Sevastopol, where they are trying to “voluntarily-compulsorily” replace plots with “compensation” of a million rubles, the “director of the department of labor and social protection of the population” Elena Sulyagina at the end of December announced an increase of 240 million in “regional budget funds” for the aforementioned “regional payment” of 400 thousand, which means an additional 60 “vacancies”.
There is no social portrait of the new “cannon fodder” in open sources, however, it is indicated by individual obituaries of those “contract workers” of 2024 who have already died, published by the occupiers, as well as the “GRUZ-200” database from “Krym.Realii”.
In 2024, they established from open sources, including social networks, at least 319 cases of Crimean deaths in the ranks of the aggressor army, with 33 “cargo 200” arriving on the peninsula in November 2024. Of those killed in November, several people joined the aggressor army on unknown dates, but at least 7 definitely ended up there in the same 2024, and another 8 were quite likely “contracted” at the same time.
The age range of these “contract soldiers” is large, from 19 to 50 years old, they were mainly killed either in the Kursk region or in the south of the Donetsk region. Obviously, “cargo 200” becomes public more often after its death in units with “local registration”, such as the infamous “810th brigade”, and more often in Sevastopol than in Crimea.
Almost all of the killed “Crimean contract soldiers” of 2024 are people without higher education, of the 7 mentioned (Ilyas Bashirov, Daniil Blagodyr, Vladimir Glazyrin, Alexey Kovgan, Vladimir Lukinsky, Ivan Khodakovsky, Dmitry Tsybin), three went to the aggressor’s army in Sevastopol, another 3 in the AR of Crimea and another in Russia, almost all of them worked at construction sites on the peninsula.
Bashirov and Lukinsky were previously “tried” by the occupiers for beatings and theft, respectively, and Khodakovsky signed a “contract” after being charged with drug possession. People with an unspecified date of conscription worked as drivers, on the railroad, in agriculture, and one was a foreign contract sailor, however, convicted of a drug charge even before the occupation.
A common factor among these people is the complete absence of media mentions of them before the date of death, the absence of a “registered business” and any public activity. This can probably be extended to the current Crimean “contract soldiers” in general.
