Despite huge manpower losses, how is Russia replenishing its military?

Moscow’s tactics, on the battlefield and domestically, are incentivising men to join and stick to the army.

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.”