More than 40 months in, Russia's war on Ukraine rages on, with Moscow still grinding forward, powered by legions of volunteers, men enticed high wages and lucrative benefits.
In some regions, signing bonuses for new volunteers exceed an entire year's salary, a torrent of money that has transformed some local economies and propped up popular support for the conflict.
Casualty rates not seen since World War II have also not put a damper on recruiting. Russia will hit 1 million men dead or wounded sometime this summer, according to one newly published estimate.
That's changing.
At least five Russian regions in recent weeks have decreased their onetime signing bonuses for new volunteers. On June 5, the Volga region of Bashkortostan became the latest, halving its payment for new recruits.
The reason, experts said, is in part due to tighter budgets as regional governments struggle to keep up with the payments amid worsening economic conditions.
"I believe that, on the one hand, [this is connected] with the tense state of the regional budget," one economist in Bashkortostan told RFE/RL.
"On the other hand, this may be a sign that the need to attract contract soldiers is no longer so acute," said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid prosecution by authorities.
Don't Mention The War
For much of the war, Russian tactics have relied in part on frontal infantry assaults to overwhelm Ukrainian positions. That's contributed to the extraordinary casualty rates.
Fearing popular backlash, the Kremlin has taken pains to avoid calling a general conscription. Instead, authorities have relied a mix of personnel to keep up troop numbers: private mercenary companies like Wagner have done their own recruiting; prison inmates have been drawn, or coerced, into volunteering, with offers of amnesties for service completed.
Since 2023, the Kremlin also set recruitment quotas for regions, prompting local governments to organize their own campaigns and offer their own signing bonuses.
Added to the money offered by the Defense Ministry, the sums are considerable at a national level: $24 million per day, according to Janis Kluge, who tracks Russia war spending at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
At the beginning of 2025, Kluge estimated, between 1,000 and 1,500 men were signing up to fight on a daily basis. The average signing bonus in 37 regions he tracked was 1.4 million rubles ($17,700) -- well above the average annual salary in most regions.
"The size of Russia's average signing bonus is the best indicator of how well Russian recruitment is going," he said in a recent blog post.
Last month, Putin claimed Russia was recruiting 60,000 men a month.
In Bashkortostan, the regional government has steadily ratcheted up its signing payments: from 205,000 rubles in the summer of 2022, to 505,000 rubles two years later, and then tripled to 1.6 million rubles ($20,190) as of the beginning of 2025.
Now, according to a June 5 decree signed by the regional head, Radiy Kharibov, that amount is cut to 1 million rubles ($12,620). The regional capital, Ufa, which has its own municipal signing payment, is also cutting the amount it is offering.
Bashkortostan has also recorded some of the highest confirmed losses of all Russian regions, according to tallies by RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service , the BBC's Russian Service, and independent media outlet Mediazona.
Other regions that have also cut their signing bonuses include the far northern Yamal-Nenets region and Nizhny Novgorod.
In Samara, whose signing payment, at 3.6 million rubles ($45,430) was the highest in the country, the local administration dropped the amount to 2.1 million rubles ($26,500) as of the end of February.
Russia's Retooled Economy
After the start of the Kremlin's all-out invasion in February 2022, Western governments hit Russia with wide-ranging sanctions in a bid to force Moscow to call off its assault. Its economy, however, has proven more resilient than many experts predicted, due, in part, to continued revenues from oil and gas sales abroad.
The Kremlin has poured money not only into recruitment, but also retooling its economy, expanding military industrial facilities to churn out tanks and guns and bombs.
That, however, has strained the economy, fueling inflation and in turn causing the central bank to hike interest rates, making it costlier for Russians to borrow to buy houses and other big-ticket items.
Economic growth is now expected to slow to 1.7 percent this year, according to some European forecasts, or possibly 2 percent, according to others.
Abbas Gallyamov, an exiled political commentator who previously worked as a speechwriter for Putin, said the regional payment cuts are likely due to tightening budgets.
"They are running out of money," he told RFE/RL.
