A growing number of Russian regions have sharply cut signing bonuses for men volunteering to fight in Ukraine, a trend highlighting both budget woes from Russia’s sputtering economy as well as shifting manpower priorities for the military.
In recent weeks, at least eight regions –mainly in the central Volga region but also in the sprawling sub-Arctic Yamal-Nenets region — have reduced payouts made to men who sign contracts to join the armed forces.
That also includes the Samara region, where new volunteers — known widely as kontraktniki — now receive just 400,000 rubles ($5,000) upon signing up, down from a high of 3.6 million rubles in January.
With estimates of dead and wounded now in excess of 1 million, Russia has sustained its war on Ukraine –now in its 45th month — due to a patchwork system of mobilization and recruitment.
The recruitment system has relied on a combination of federal payments – from the Defense Ministry — and local payments, from regional governments who have been ordered to meet certain quotas. In some cases, individual cities or towns have contributed to the signing bonuses.
Volunteers have been enticed by extraordinarily high wages and signing bonuses, plus generous death benefits for widows and survivors. In some regions, the total amount of money new volunteers receive exceeds an entire year’s salary.
The flood of money has allowed commanders, and political leaders, to avoid another unpopular mobilization, like the one that happened in September 2022. It has also juiced local economies in poorer regions far from the wealthier cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
‘A Job For Real Men’
In the Volga region of Tatarstan, which has suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any Russian region, payments decreased sharply this year: from 2.7 million rubles to 400,000 rubles.
The 400,000-ruble bonus — which is the minimum amount required by federal authorities — is augmented by an equal amount from the Defense Ministry, according to recruiting banners published on the website of the regional news agency and other state-affiliated media.
In Bashkortostan, another central region that has suffered disproportionately high casualty rates, the 1.6 million ruble signing bonus was cut by 600,000 rubles.
In Mari El, authorities made the tiny, impoverished Volga republic one of the top paying regions in the country earlier this year, offering signing bonuses of 2.6 million rubles. Official figures showed the region managed to draw 1,300 men in the first six months of 2025. Now, bonuses have dropped to 400,000 rubles,
Mikhail Delyagin, a lawmaker who sits on the parliament’s economic policy committee, said the reductions were likely due to reductions in transfers from the national budget.
“This is the result of Finance Ministry policies…which are squeezing the country dry, including affluent regions like Bashkortostan,” he told RTVi in June.
Defense Ministry advertising campaigns — on billboards, on social media, on job boards — have heavily emphasized the financial benefits of signing up to fight in Ukraine. In some cases, the ads have specifically targeted people with financial difficulties.
“A contact where financial stability begins,” read one recruitment poster that circulated in the far-northern region of Yamal-Nenets.
A recruitment flyer circulated by the Russian Defense Ministry, promoting “financial stability” as a perk of signing up to fight in Ukraine.
“‘A job for real men’: instant money, instant payments,” said Ivan Chuvilyaev, who works with an anti-war activist organization whose name roughly translates as Get Lost or Take A Hike. “Clearly, the target audience is those with microloans [and] loans; those who’ve lost their jobs; those who can’t afford to pay for an apartment, a car, or child support,” he said.
“Or we’ve had cases where someone’s mother fell ill, spent six months dying, and spent all their money first on treatment then on the funeral. Afterward, they have no savings, no money, nothing at all. Just a [recruitment] ad shoved into their mailbox,” he said.
A Feeding Trough
When Putin announced a mobilization of the country’s general reserves in September 2022, seven months after launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the move shocked Russians, as many assumed the war was going to end quickly. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the country, for the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkey, and elsewhere.
In the wake of that, officials came up with the patchwork recruiting system, tapping federal and local budgets, to make it lucrative to volunteer to fight.
They also resorted to other methods.
For example, conscripts serving their mandatory one-year of military service are barred from being sent into combat or outside the country. But commanders and recruiters have coerced — some say dragooned — conscripts into signing contracts after just a few months of basic training.
“Conscription is essentially becoming the main feeding trough for contractual military service,” Chuvilyaev said.
More recently, lawmakers have changed the rules for conducting the twice-annual conscription drafts, tightening some regulations and removing some widely used — and abused — exemptions.
Russian soldiers preparing to deploy to Ukraine attend a ceremony to receive new vehicles in September 2025
Not all regions are cutting signing bonuses. The Voronezh, Altai, and Tambov regions have announced increased one-time payments.
And, in some locations, the recruitment campaigns have resembled sales pitches for cars or household appliances.
For example, in the Siberian region of Tyumen, authorities said they were offering new signing bonuses of 3.4 million rubles but only if contracts are signed before November 30.
Similar time-sensitive incentives were also offered in Khanty-Mansiysk, Tula, and even the Moscow region, promising new volunteers higher payments if contracts are signed before year’s end.
Overall, said Janis Kluge, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs who has closely tracked recruitment figures, Russia spent about $4 billion for signing bonuses in the first half of 2025. Total spending on recruitment bonuses was likely to exceed $10 billion for the entire year, he predicted.
War Economy Slowdown
After three-plus years of torrid growth, Russia’s economy is showing serious signs of strain, in part because of inflation caused by high wages, which in turn have been caused by labor shortages as men are lured to fight in Ukraine.
That’s changing now, with fiscal and monetary policymakers predicting a sharp slowdown.
The federal government has called for hiking the national value-added tax as a way to keep its budget under control, while also maintaining high levels of war spending.
Regionally, the downturn is also pinching local officials, straining budgets and forcing governments to look for savings — including cutting some contract bonuses.
Artyom Klyga, a lawyer for the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, a nongovernmental group, said regions that offered above-average signing bonuses were in some ways experiments, as policymakers toyed with ways to entice volunteers.
“They concluded that paying large amounts wasn’t particularly worthwhile and decided to discontinue these experiments in some regions,” Klyga said. “Federal budget planning for next year probably also played a role. It’s already clear it will be a major failure.”
