Just a few bureaucratic hurdles to clear and Andrei can quit his factory job in Transdniester, a pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova, pick up a gun, and join like-minded countrymen fighting with invading Russian forces in neighboring Ukraine.
Andrei, who declined to give his last name, recently told RFE/RL's Moldovan Service that he was waiting for the Russian Consulate in Tiraspol, the de facto capital of Transdniester, to renew an expired Russian passport he also holds along with his Moldovan one.
With that document, he said, he will travel to Moscow, where online postings luring foreigners to fight in Russia's unprovoked attack instruct them to finish the formalities at a recruitment office. There are an estimated 220,000 Russian citizens in Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova in the early 1990s and hosts around 1,500 Russian soldiers.
Andrei said he hopes to join the so-called Dniester detachment, a mercenary unit of Moldovans reportedly formed by Alexandr Kalinin, a shady figure who's been blacklisted by the EU and United States for his pro-Russian activities. Kalinin has had his citizenship stripped by Moldova for much the same reasons and some more sinister, including recent threats to lead a group of fighters on a march to the capital, Chisinau, to depose the pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu.
The Kremlin has relied on both its regular armed forces and private military companies to fight in Ukraine, and the lines of command and recruitment are often blurred.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, has eased the paperwork and offered other incentives to swell the ranks of his military forces with foreigners.
In January, Putin issued a decree allowing foreign nationals who serve in the Russian military or in "military formations" to obtain Russian citizenship for themselves and their families.
And more fighters are apparently something Putin needs as losses continue to mount despite recent advances by Russian invading forces in some spots along the thousands-kilometer-long front line in eastern Ukraine.
Russia rarely, if ever, releases casualty figures. The most recent data from the Defense Ministry, published in January 2023, pointed to just over 6,000 deaths, although a recent U.S. assessment put the number much higher, at over 300,000.
Kyiv has also been reluctant to release figures on its military losses, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did say on February 25 that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Putin launched his country's full-scale invasion.
Andrei, who works for a window manufacturer in Bender, a town just west of Tiraspol, said joining the Dniester fighting unit would allow him to join "our brothers," who "share the same ideas" as him.
The messaging apps Telegram and Viber are used to target men in Transdniester and in Gagauzia, another autonomous region of Moldova where, like Trandniester, pro-Russian sentiment is pervasive and stoked by Kremlin-friendly locals.
Recently, that pressure has intensified. In Transdniester, where Russia has nearly 2,000 troops it describes as peacekeepers, the local parliament on February 28 appealed to Russia for unspecified "protection," complaining about "pressure" from Chisinau.
How Do I Join The Special Military Operation?
"Hello! I am from Transdniester, I am 55 years old. Do I have a chance of getting into the SVO (special military operation)?" asks a user named AnD on a Russian-language Telegram recruitment channel, using Putin's term for the invasion.
Responding to him and other men from Transdniester, the administrator of the Moscow Recruiter channel tells them it is important for them to arrive in Moscow and have a Russian passport and a Russian military passbook. He also says they can be accommodated in a hostel and will be helped to acquire the needed military document if they don't have it.
The administrator appears to promise to reimburse some of their travel expenses, while others are advised to borrow money from relatives and "repay the debt when the first payments (for their mercenary service) come."
Getting to Moscow is tricky and costly, as much of Europe has closed its airspace and airports to Russian commercial flights, with air routes usually going through Istanbul or Dubai. Bus trips to Russia are even more circuitous, now circumventing neighboring Ukraine.
While it's unclear what connections these Viber and Telegram channels have to Kalinin, he is also active on social media, promoting and recruiting men from Moldova to his mercenary force. Kalinin had his Moldovan citizenship stripped in November 2023 by Sandu for "recruitment into the armed forces of a foreign state."
In September 2022, the president declared that individuals with Russian and Moldovan citizenship who enlisted in the Russian Army to fight in Ukraine would have their Moldovan citizenship revoked. On his Telegram channel at the time, Kalinin dismissed Sandu's move as an attempt to "remove political figures who could compete against her in the 2024 presidential election."
Days after Sandu's action, Kalinin threatened to oust her with a foreign force marching on Chisinau and printed comments that led to opening a second criminal probe into the fringe figure.
The Dniester detachment is the only military formation actively and openly recruiting Moldovan citizens.
Kalinin, who has posted photos of himself garbed in fatigues amid the fighting in Ukraine, has not divulged the numbers of his unit. He does promise those who join a monthly payment of 2,100 euros ($2,278), following a one-time payment of 4,800 euros to the new recruit for signing up. How this is all being financed is unclear.
The Dniester fighters of Kalinin may be part of a wider network of mercenaries and other fighting units with links to the Kremlin.
In an interview on January 16 with Russia's Vzglyad news site, Kalinin claimed his unit was embedded with the Skif Battalion, a mercenary group that is subordinated to the Terek Brigade, which, in turn, is part of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad.
A recent investigation by RFE/RL investigative units Schemes and Systema found that a purported private military company called Redut is in reality a recruitment system for combat units that is coordinated and funded by Russia's armed forces and their intelligence agency. One of the units allegedly funded by Redut, the investigation found, was Skif.
Kalinin has so far not divulged where his units have or are deployed. In October 2023, pro-Kremlin media reported that the Skif Battalion had ambushed a Ukrainian military convoy near the town of Soledar in Donetsk, a region of eastern Ukraine partially controlled by pro-Russian forces since 2014.
Both sides have foreign fighters in their ranks, with Kyiv openly recruiting to their international legion, whose numbers have reportedly dropped after initial enthusiasm.
Foreign conscripts fighting for Russian mercenary groups can receive thousands of euros a month, eclipsing anything they are likely to earn at home. CNN recently reported that 15,000 Nepalese men have joined the Russian military, after the Russian government last year announced a lucrative package for foreign fighters.
Figuring out how many foreigners are fighting in Ukraine for Russia is tricky, as many have served both in mercenary groups (mainly in the Wagner Group before it was dissolved) and in regular units of the Russian armed forces.
Foreign conscript casualties are also unclear. The BBC Russian Service recently reported that, by the end of December 2023, at least 254 foreigners who had served in the Russian Army had been killed. Those figures, of course, are likely just a fraction of the Russian casualties, despite official pronouncements from Kremlin officials.
A U.S. intelligence report declassified in mid-December 2023 estimated that 315,000 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. If accurate, the figure would represent 87 percent of the roughly 360,000 troops Russia had before the war, according to the report.
The independent Russian news outlet, Mediazona, reported on February 24 that about 75,000 Russian men died in 2022 and 2023 fighting in the war.
A joint investigation published by Mediazona and Meduza, another independent Russian news site, indicates that the rate of Russia's losses in Ukraine is not slowing and that Moscow is losing about 120 men a day.
The risk of death -- let alone whether or not the war is just -- is not a matter that concerns Andrei.
"I feel like I have to be there [on the battlefield]," he told RFE/RL. "I realize I may never come back. Well, that's fate."
