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Russia’s military recruitment numbers remain steady, but how long can the regions foot the bill? Meduza asks researcher Janis Kluge.

Source: Meduza

It’s no secret that Russia relies on high salaries and sign-on bonuses to recruit more soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Despite staggering battlefield losses, an estimated 30,000 men still enlist every month. But after four years of full-scale war, the cost of finding volunteers is only rising steadily, and the burden is falling on Russia’s regions. On a recent episode of The Naked Pravda, deputy editor Eilish Hart explored the big questions behind Russia’s ongoing recruitment numbers with Dr. Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. The following Q&A, based on that interview, has been edited for length and clarity. 

Listen to The Naked Pravda’s full interview with Dr. Janis Kluge here. 

— How long have you been tracking Russian military recruitment trends, and what sources do you use to gather data?

— I started trying to track recruitment in the summer of 2024. I was not the first to do it; many projects use similar methods. Inspired by iStories, I started using Russian federal budget data and then regional budgets to verify official statements about recruitment. Recruitment is clearly the Achilles’ heel of Russia’s war. The way Russia fights right now is based on recruiting lots of men, mostly voluntarily. And in 2024, I became interested in how long this voluntary model could last. 

The only official information we have is the annual statements from the defense minister and then regular statements by [Deputy Security Council Chairman Dmitry] Medvedev. They report a stable recruitment rate, usually around 400,000 or 500,000 men a year. So, to verify that what these officials are saying is actually true — or at least understand if it’s to some degree reliable or pure fantasy — we look at Russian budget data. 

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Russia pays out sign-on bonuses from both the federal and regional budgets. The federal bonus used to be 195,000 rubles [about $2,500], and it was increased to 400,000 rubles [about $5,200] in August of 2024. Once we know Russia’s total spending on these bonuses, we can divide it by the bonus [amount] to get an idea of the number of contracts. Of course, there are always doubts regarding any data that Russia publishes, but I believe these budget figures are reliable. It’s highly granular data, and there’s no reason to believe that the Russian Finance Ministry tries to manipulate it. 

The figures on bonus payouts for all of Russia more or less confirm what officials are saying. Not everybody gets a bonus — prisoners are [no longer] entitled to them — so when officials say 400,000, then we find bonus payments for 300,000 or 350,000 men. So, it’s plausible.

The regions also pay bonuses to recruits, but not all of them publish budget data. However, we can try to extrapolate from the regional data we do have and get another number to compare to the official statements. In recent years, these numbers were also relatively close. And this gives you an overall picture that the official statements are probably not too far off.

— According to the official figures, Russia signed 450,000 new recruits in 2024 and 422,000 in 2025, so there was a slight drop in recruitment last year. Is this a consistent trend? 

— It’s important to understand how the system works in Russia. It’s very much a top-down system: a recruitment target is set at the beginning of the year, and then each region is given a quota. If a region doesn’t fulfill its quota, then there will be consequences for the governor and so on. And the regions often further break down these quotas for municipalities. 

It hasn’t been publicly confirmed that this system exists, but there are many signs and reports [that suggest it does]. And in a top-down system like this, you wouldn’t see the numbers go down if recruitment gets more difficult, but you would see stress in the regions as they use more radical methods to try and fulfill [their quotas]. 

Because there’s so much pressure on the regions, they have managed to do that so far, at an increasing cost. The number looks relatively stable in the end: around 420,000 last year and 450,000 the year before. But what has changed is how much the regions have to pay and the degree of force they use. There are many different methods for finding [more] men, but you can tell from the data that it’s definitely becoming more difficult.  

— Russia hasn’t announced a mobilization wave since the fall of 2022, and even as the war enters its fifth year, the military is still managing to recruit tens of thousands of people every month. Why are so many still enlisting?

— There are different motives, and they have evolved, but I think the dominant, overwhelming motive is receiving these sign-on bonuses. There are often people in precarious situations — they end up in prison or [in trouble] with the police, or they have very high debt — and sometimes going to the front is a way out. You can hardly call that real voluntary recruitment; it’s more like the state is exploiting or creating emergency situations, with the goal of finding men to recruit. 

For example, when policemen get a payout if they find somebody whom they can then send to the front line. There are also a dozen or so regions that [offer payments for recruiters] who find people to sign contracts. As you can imagine, this leads to all kinds of pressure, betrayal, misinformation, and so on, mainly affecting men at the fringes of society. People who are vulnerable and don’t have a network or anyone to protect them are more easily forced into the system.

But still, from what I can tell, the majority sign up for the money. It’s so much wealth that it changes their families’ lives in a very dramatic way, and I think that alone is convincing. There’s also the idea that serving your country is a good thing to do, and that Russia needs to be defended. This probably isn’t the driving motive anymore, but you can use it to justify or make your decision look heroic when maybe it’s just about the money.

— Russia’s military spending has surged during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In December, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov reported that direct spending on the war amounted to 5.1 percent of GDP in 2025, the equivalent of more than $137 billion. How does spending on recruitment fit into this picture?

— It’s substantial, but it’s not the most expensive part of this war for Russia. If you add together what the regions and the federal budget are paying, and the bonuses from municipalities and companies, you end up with around 0.5 percent of GDP — roughly a tenth of the number Belousov referred to.

It’s also important to put this number, 5.1 percent of GDP, into context. This is just Defense Ministry spending from the federal budget, so it does not include regional payments. Many costs of this war are not included in this 5.1 percent. [Total spending] is probably a bit higher, but you can still see that these one-time recruitment payments are not the most expensive thing. Payouts to the families of killed and injured soldiers may amount to more than that. If a family member dies in the war, then you’re entitled to 10–15 million rubles [about $130,000–$196,000], which is even more than the sign-on bonuses. 

— Is spending on recruitment becoming unsustainable for regional economies? Will the federal government have to step in and take some of the burden off the regions? 

— Yes. We are actually close to a situation where the balance of regional budgets is under so much pressure that the federal government will have to transfer more funds to them. Taken together, last year’s regional budget deficit was 1.5 trillion rubles [about $19.6 billion], a historic high. This is the cost the regions are paying for the war. 

There are already signs that the federal government sees this problem and is trying to support at least some regions. For example, there’s a debt relief program that allows poorer regions [to write off] spending on the war. But so far, at least from the available data, we don’t see any increase in transfers to regional budgets to cover [the deficit].

There are also reports that some regions are struggling to fulfill their quotas because they don’t have enough money to increase bonuses. Several regions decreased bonuses to the minimum in late 2025 and then raised them again in January; obviously, they were struggling with their budgets, but now that the new budget year has started, they can hike them again. 

So, it’s definitely putting stress on regional budgets. On average, about three or four percent of regional budgets go towards recruitment. There are some extreme cases, like Mari El, where sign-on bonuses are 10 percent of the regional budget — comparable to spending on health or education. But most regions don’t have much wiggle room: they have to pay the salaries of public officials, healthcare and school workers, and so on. Also, the average bonus is basically increasing every month. 

From my point of view, the current set-up is unsustainable. The federal government will have to give the regions money at some point this year, unless it wants to risk regional budgets falling apart under the burden of the war.

— The Ukrainian military claims that Russia’s battlefield losses have started to outstrip recruitment numbers. Could high military casualties eventually make it more difficult for Russia to sustain recruitment?

— This is essentially a question of what’s driving these men to [enlist] right now. Is it unemployment or financial stress? Do they simply want millions of rubles to change their families’ lives? 

Of course, they also have to think about the risks of being killed or at least injured in this war. My assumption is that this usually isn’t given the appropriate consideration. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to explain why so many men are signing up. Maybe they’re under the illusion that it’s not as deadly or risky as it is. Whether they understand the reality of the war is an [open] question. Do they see neighbors, dads, sons, and husbands coming back in coffins, and does that influence their decision-making?

We can imagine people getting the impression that it’s becoming much too dangerous to sign up. However, there’s also an example of the opposite situation. When [U.S. President] Donald Trump came to power at the beginning of 2025, it seemed like there might be a [ceasefire] deal and that the war would be over soon. This seems to have led to an increase in recruitment as people thought they could get three or four million rubles [for enlisting] without having to fight. So, in some ways, how the war is going affects recruitment.

At the same time, it’s difficult to understand how much information these men really have and how much of a difference it makes. The war is already so deadly. If you look at the data on killed Russian soldiers from Mediazona, which is not the total number, you realize that if Russia recruits 400,000 men, probably around 20 percent of them will die over the course of the next year. So it is very risky. 

I think this is probably the biggest danger for this volunteer recruitment model: the impression that it’s simply not worth it because you will just die and the war will never end. And this can come about quite suddenly and unexpectedly, if the assessment that it’s too dangerous spreads among the Russian male population.

— Is there any possibility that the Kremlin will need to declare another round of mobilization in the near future?

— I don’t think it’ll happen in the coming months, but it is definitely a possibility. There have been some preparations. The digital registry of [military-age] men and closing the border for those who have received [draft] notices are attempts to improve a system that, in some ways, did not work very well in 2022. 

We have already seen that Putin has the political willingness to go there if necessary. However, the consequences might be even more drastic than last time. They would have to close the border for men, because people would no longer be able to tell themselves it was a one-off. Many men who left Russia [during the 2022 mobilization] came back after a year or so. But if it happens again, people will expect more and more [mobilization waves] in the future and might rather leave the country. 

If they take this step again, it will be seen as an indication that the war isn’t going great. It will really hurt voluntary recruitment if they force people [to go fight in Ukraine]. Looking at the regional bonus payments late last year and early this year, I don’t see a dramatic decrease [in recruitment] that would trigger such a step. Then again, I don’t know the actual situation on the front lines. More and more experts are talking about a [manpower shortage], so it’s not an unlikely scenario. 

Listen to the full interview