When President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ivan Chenin left his comfortable life as a student in Moscow to deliver aid as a volunteer to the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics of eastern Ukraine, which Russia now claims as its “new territories”.After returning from a trip to the occupied areas of Ukraine last year, Chenin jumped further into the fray, enlisting in the Thunder Cascade volunteer unit.“I served as an operator of a reconnaissance UAV [drone],” Chenin told Al Jazeera.“My duties included surveillance and reconnaissance of enemy territory. If a target was detected, I reported to the commander, after which we controlled it. Then the artillery or missile systems worked.”Chenin is one of nearly half a million people who took on a military career in Russia last year, whether as contract soldiers or members of volunteer units.While Ukraine struggles with manpower to the point that recruitment officers are accused of dubiously detaining young men off the street, Russia, for now, does not appear to have this problem.In March, Putin claimed at a meeting that Russia is recruiting new servicemen at twice the rate Ukraine is.Ukrainian officials in Kyiv said in April that the Russian military plans to increase its grouping in Ukraine by 150,000 soldiers this year. Earlier this month, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intel …
