Russia: Mobilization of men in Ukraine leads to a shortage of manpower

Russian conscripts take a bus to the military units of the Eastern Military District in Yakutsk, Russia, Friday, September 23, 2022, after the "partial mobilization" decreed by Vladimir Putin (Illustration image).

PA

Text by: Léo Vidal-Giraud

1 min

Nearly 300,000 Russian men have been mobilized, according to the Kremlin.

Many more, according to several NGOs who speak of 500,000 conscripts, and even more have left the country.

This “partial mobilization” is already having economic consequences for Russian companies.

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Up to a third of companies in the Russian industrial sector are facing a serious shortage of personnel, a record since the fall of the USSR.

This is what emerges from a study conducted this week by the Gaidar Institute in Moscow.

Light industry is the most affected with nearly 70% of companies claiming to lack staff and have difficulty recruiting them.

►Also read: Partial mobilization in Russia: uncertainty and anxiety

This is not the first time that Russian companies have experienced difficulties in terms of human resources: the country has lived in a situation of near full employment for many years, in part due to its declining demographics, and the post- Covid, for example, had already strained the job market.

Difficulty maintaining production

This new crisis, considers the author of the study, is due to the partial mobilization decreed in September.

Between 300,000 and 500,000 men have since been mobilized and almost a million of them have left the country, and this inevitably has immediate consequences for the economy.

Russian manufacturers say they are having difficulty maintaining the quality and quantity of their production.

The Ministry of Defense had nevertheless assured, at the start of the mobilization, that no company would see more than a third of its personnel mobilized, but the application of these instructions was very uncertain.

An additional difficulty for a sector already very affected by the sanctions.

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