Moscow searches for Ukrainians to fight against other Ukrainians. Russian command has launched another recruitment campaign for the BARS-33 unit in occupied Kherson Oblast.
For this purpose, it targets local residents for positions as drone operators, offering salaries from $2,700, short-term contracts, modern equipment, and service near home, the Center of National Resistance reports.
The campaign is targeted at men remaining in the occupied territory, for many of whom the BARS offer looks like one of the few avenues to a relatively stable income and a way to avoid being sent to the hottest sections of the front line.
The reality of the BARS framework, as documented by the Center, runs in the opposite direction: men who sign up cannot leave the military service against its own people.
Promise: high payments and short-term contracts
The advertising materials offer "attractive conditions": salaries starting at $2,700, short-term contracts, modern equipment, and service "close to home."
The campaign engages specifically men who remained in occupied Kherson Oblast and now face limited economic options under occupation.
BARS units present themselves publicly as an elite volunteer movement, with Russian authorities highlighting officials, governors' representatives, and businessmen among the ostensible volunteers.
Formally, the BARS detachments remain classified as "volunteer" units.
The reality: ordinary motor-rifle units
In practice, many BARS detachments are integrated into the regular structure of the Russian armed forces and used as ordinary motor-rifle units.
The BARS-1, BARS-11, and BARS-16 units most often operate as part of the 8th Combined Arms Army. BARS-3 is operationally subordinate to elements of the 8th and 58th armies. Within these units, commanders systematically refuse to sign discharge requests, threaten contract servicemen with criminal cases, or simply ignore submitted applications altogether.
The trap: indefinite imprisonment in Russian military
For Kherson residents who sign the BARS-33 contract, the consequence is not the short-term service the advertising describes but indefinite imprisonment in the Russian military structure, the Center concludes.
The promise of close-to-home posting routes the new recruits into units that are then operationally deployed wherever the 8th or 58th armies require force, including the front-line sections. The advertising framed the contract as a way to avoid.
The structure assumes that the men signing up will not be able to verify the contract's reality until they have already disappeared into it.
