The issue: These appetizing incentives don’t seem to be working

The Russian army is having a hard time filling its ranks with draftees. About half of all potential recruits never show up for induction. Bribes to obtain medical deferments are common, and there is no real social stigma attached to draft dodging. In fact, it seems more or less expected.

THE UNDERMANNED army is now hoping to lure illegal immigrants into joining with a promise of full Russian citizenship three years into a five-year enlistment.

The draftees, if they show up, serve for 12 months, but the new recruits face a vicious brutality, which Human Rights Watch called inhuman, degrading and grossly abusive, at the hands of the “granddads,” soldiers serving the final six months of their enlistment. Not surprisingly, desertion is common.

Numerous studies have brought this to the attention of the officer corps and the government, with little to no effect.

But the Russian army has decided there might be an incentive to join and even to stay for the entire 12 months — better food.

The army is doing away with barley porridge, a staple of the military going back to czarist times and widely described as inedible. It is being replaced by buckwheat porridge, which is described as five times more expensive but does not require the hours and hours of cooking that the barley does.

THE QUICKER preparation time means that the army has been able to fire a large number of civilian cooks, who are not too happy about it. Maybe we could hire a few of them to cook for death row inmates like the one in Texas who ordered a huge last meal then refused to touch it.

At least with barley that’s been boiled all day, he’d have an excuse.

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