At the end of every month, the war arrives in his mailbox. Piotr, a computer science student in Ufa, a large city west of the Urals, is following it from afar – the Kremlin's "special military operation" launched against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The dynamic young man in his 20s talked first and foremost about his IT start-up projects. But he also recounted how "this war, which is not ours, is part of our daily lives."

In the fall of 2022, like so many other young people on his campus, he feared that mobilization would catch up with him and send him to the front. His status as a student and IT expert has since earned him an exemption. "On the other hand, volunteer recruitment has continued to intensify. I can see it in my mail," Piotr quipped. In his letterbox: the monthly electricity bill. On the back: a reproduction of the poster, pasted all over town, detailing the money offered to any volunteer for "joining the army of victory," as promised by the official slogan.

Using a great deal of publicity, the Defense Ministry is working with regional administrations across the country to organize this local recruitment of men prepared to go off and fight. It's a hidden mobilization, designed to attract volunteers without causing the panic of the official mobilization in autumn 2022. It's a necessity, as the conflict drags on and the front expands, from Crimea to Kursk, a Russian region partially occupied by the Ukrainian army since summer 2024.

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