Flounder-ing Putin pays recruits’ families in fish

Russia’s beleaguered enlistment officers were given a new way to entice men to join up this week: plying their families with fresh fish.

The local chief of President Putin’s ruling party, Mikhail Shuvalov, promised islanders in the far-eastern Sakhalin island 5kg of flounder, pollock and salmon in exchange for sending their men to a war believed to have already killed 50,000 Russian soldiers.

“We take your husband and you get to eat for a few weeks,” said Anton Barbashin, a Russian political analyst. “That’s a true indication of poverty officials want everyone to forget.” The initiative follows a scheme in Tuva where families receive one sheep, coal, 50kg of flour and two bags of potatoes for each family member dispatched to the front.

Natives of both impoverished regions are not ethnic Slavs. President Putin has drawn disproportionately on non-Slavic groups to fight in Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have fled the country to escape the call up, prompting fears of a brain drain.

Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, said that the army had conscripted more than 200,000 recruits since Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” on September 21.