Russia economy meltdown as soldiers’ sign-up bonuses skyrocket to £37,000 | World | News
The Kremlin’s vision of a swift and easy victory in Ukraine has proved to be a disastrous miscalculation ever since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kyiv figures from June revealed that one million Russian soldiers were killed or wounded during the war – a number likely to spike as Moscow ramps up a summer offensive. This comes with a rising economic time bomb that Vladimir Putin will find impossible to ignore.
George Barros, Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, told the Kyiv Independent that Putin made a “fundamental strategic mistake in deciding how to resource this war”.
He said that, unlike the Soviet Union, which might have coerced Russians to fight and die in Ukraine, the current regime is instead paying soldiers to go fight in Ukraine. For Barros, this strategy can only work when running a short war, not a multi-year protracted war.
As Russia’s war losses mount, it is constantly under pressure to source more replacements. But attracting recruits to high-risk battlefields has always been difficult, and Putin’s solution is to pay people to fight. As a consequence, sign-up bonuses have skyrocketed. In some regions, signing bonuses for new recruits exceed an entire year’s salary. The average Russian monthly wage in 2024 was £720, according to The Moscow Times.
In July 2024, Putin ordered a doubling of the lump-sum payment offered to recruits in September 2022 to 400,000 rubles (over £3,600). This is an incredibly high number, especially as Russia loses and recruits approximately 35,000 to 45,000 people per month, according to Barros.
In an even more shocking move, recruits drawn to the Samara Oblast in western Russia were offered a record-high one-time payment of four million rubles (£36,987), according to the Kyiv Post. These recruits are then sent ‘to storm’ – a term associated with assault operations.
A recruiter told the Russian online news publication Verstka: “People are coming from all over Russia. With four million rubles on offer, plus an extra 50,000 (£462) per month for nine months, it’s no surprise. Even in Moscow, they were paying half as much, so now everyone is coming to Samara. The dormitories are full.”
According to an analysis by the German economist Janis Kluge, Russia‘s daily bill just for sign-up bonuses is £18 million. The ballooning bills come at a time when Russia‘s economy is already under huge strain from Western sanctions and falling oil and gas revenues.
While Ukraine is still spending more of its GDP on defence than any other country in the world, Moscow figures reveal that military spending has ballooned to 6.3% of GDP in 2025 – its highest level since the Cold War.
A report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in April said Ukraine‘s military expenditure in 2024 was £47 billion. The report also predicted Russia‘s 2025 defence spending would rise to £128.7 billion.
