What would compel one of the region’s most oppressed ethnic groups to volunteer to risk their lives in Moscow’s war? The chance to earn a life-changing amount of money is the obvious motivation. Moscow promises volunteers more than $2,000 a month in wages. When the average salary in Kyrgyzstan is less than $400 a month, that offer might make any young Kyrgyz think twice — even if their country’s authorities officially forbid them from accepting the offer and Moscow doesn’t always pay.

But Moscow promises more than a short-term dole: It will fulfill the immigrants’ old dream. Over the past two years, the path to Russian citizenship—and long-term socioeconomic security, assuming the fighting in Ukraine can be safely resolved—has become increasingly easy for volunteers. In its desperate hunt for bodies, the Kremlin has increasingly abolished rules that prevent Central Asians from becoming citizens. Today, a volunteer has a path to a passport after just a few months in the Russian army: a simple quid pro quo that suits both sides, even if the balance of power is self-evident. Moscow, the old imperial center, remains a country of unparalleled economic opportunity in the region.

It is impossible to say how effective these tactics have been in terms of sheer numbers, since Moscow does not release official statistics on the size and composition of its military. However, the evidence suggests that many Central Asians are, either by force or by choice, entering the ranks of Putin’s army in Ukraine. Hundreds die, but their compatriots keep coming, with 1.3 million arriving in the first quarter of 2023 and similar numbers since then.

In this way, Moscow has established a new type of capitalist imperialism. In some ways, its grip on its regions resembles the old Soviet system, when comrade-citizens dreamed of coming to the imperial metropolis of Moscow to realize dreams of upward mobility in a rigid social hierarchy. But this old-fashioned relationship between empire and its peripheries has been married to a 21st-century globalism. In the Soviet era, movement between and within countries was tightly controlled. Today, however, sovereignty is no longer a limit to a larger power draining the human resources of a neighbor. This is taken to a new, brutal level by Moscow’s military recruitment tactics, which turn Central Asians into mercenaries-cum-economic migrants. In Europe, such free movement is an opportunity for wealthier Western countries to recruit their eastern neighbors for cheap labor; in Russia, it provides the manpower for a 20th-century “meat grinder.”

Ironically, Central Asia itself has become the recipient of an outflow of Russian migrants. Educated and wealthy young Russian exiles are setting up cafes, IT firms and other businesses in what were once the imperial peripheries of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where visas are easy to come by and Russian is still widely spoken. The Kremlin is getting a raw deal: in exchange for a flood of bodies sacrificed in war today, the best of the young generation are leaving, taking with them the economy of tomorrow.

However, a growing number of Central Asians are increasingly unhappy about this untenable situation. While their governments reel over relations with the Kremlin, sections of society are buoyed by anti-Russian and national pride movements. It is even likely that many of Russia’s young immigrants are there only for the money and would much rather stay home. In the coming years, the youngest Central Asian generation may follow in the footsteps of their Ukrainian peers and reject not only Russian influence at home altogether, but also the lure of the imperial metropolis as an immigration destination. Moscow cannot rely on Central Asia as its recruiting pool forever.