Nurse Recruitment Drive in Irkutsk Region
Medical facilities in Russia’s Irkutsk region are actively recruiting nurses to work in military hospitals located in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. Candidates are offered a one-year contract with a monthly salary starting at 220,000 rubles, plus one-time payments from both federal and regional budgets. Specific requirements state that applicants must be women under the age of 45 with no children.
Why the Recruitment Is Happening and the Terms
This recruitment campaign is being rolled out across other medical institutions in the region, following directives from the regional health ministry. Authorities justify the effort by noting that military hospitals in Russia are struggling to keep up with the influx of wounded soldiers from the war against Ukraine. As a result, civilian hospitals, maternity wards, and women’s health clinics are being repurposed to treat military personnel.
Recruits are promised job retention, training opportunities, and combat veteran status. As one chief doctor put it,
“there aren’t enough normal men,” so they need “normal people,” specifically “women under 45 without children.”
These factors are complicating recruitment, but authorities continue seeking ways to bring medical staff into military hospitals.
The push to hire nurses for military hospitals in the Irkutsk region highlights the severity of medical staffing shortages in occupied areas, where the number of wounded is climbing. The restructuring of healthcare facilities and the narrow candidate criteria underscore a critical lack of medical personnel, which could have lasting effects on civilian healthcare in the region.