Analyses of Kremlin military manpower trends say Russia pays more rubles for soldiers already killed in action, than it does to pay salaries to men alive in the ranks or to recruit new ones.
by Stefan Korshak
Feb. 17, 2026
Kyiv Post
More than one-third of the Russian Federation’s national military personnel spending on Ukraine funds survivor benefits to relatives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers already killed in combat. That’s more than the Kremlin spends on paying live soldiers salaries or on bonuses to recruit new ones, recent data published by two independent Russian analytical groups said.
Death benefits account for about 38 percent of the some $70 billion Russian taxpayers shell out to maintain a 700,000-man army in Ukraine annually, while army salaries make up 33 percent, and regional sign-up bonuses absorb around 20 percent, the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an OSINT research group founded by independent Russian political analyst Ruslan Leviev, said in a Monday report.
The cost to the Russian state both to find and to pay men to fight in Ukraine, and to pay relatives of soldiers killed in that fighting has skyrocketed, the report said, from total military personnel payments of around $39 billion from mid-2023 to mid-2024 to $52 billion in 2025, the report said.
Russia’s military leadership in mid-2023 shifted tactics from high pace armored assaults to slow-pace infantry attacks to avoid tank and other fighting vehicle losses, in response to increasingly heavy use by Ukrainian forces of military drones carrying anti-vehicle munitions.
Since then, Russian attacks have increasingly made only slow progress at the price of soaring casualties. Russian army recruiters have struggled to recruit new soldiers to fill gaps in the ranks, and in mid-June the national average signing bonus for a private soldier ready to go to Ukraine and fight was the equivalent of $31,500 – a substantial and in some Russian regions a life-changing sum.
Signing bonuses per Russian law are paid from regional budgets, which has left many regions unable to finance road repairs or schools because most of the local budget is paid out in signing bonuses to meet Kremlin-dictated recruitment quotas. In regions with strong economies even giant signing bonuses have failed to find sufficient recruits, because men prefer a stable job at home to potential death or maiming in Ukraine.
The dynamic has turned Russia’s poorest regions – among them Buryatia on the Mongolia border and Chukotka near Alaska – into the territories suffering the biggest casualty rates in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The unwanted knock-on effect of Moscow pressure on regions to meet
recruitment requirements has been to strip local governments of funds badly needed for schools, roads and social services.
Were Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine, the savings to government in war-associated payments no longer needing to be made would eliminate Russia’s national deficit and put state spending into the black, the CIT report said.
Ukraine’s military and some Western allies estimate Russia has suffered about 1.2 million casualties of whom 400,000 to 500,000 were killed in action since invading Ukraine a second time in February 2022. The most conservative, reliably confirmed number of Russian military personnel killed in the war in Ukraine comes from open-source investigations by independent Russian outlet Mediazona. As of Feb. 13, that platform, using verified identifies, confirmed the deaths of 177,433 Russian soldiers and fighters. Researchers for that group have said that the figure is probably 45 to 65 percent of the actual total.
In a Feb. 13 analysis entitled “The Price of Donbas: The Kremlin’s Manpower Costs in the Event of a New Offensive Will Exceed 5 Trillion Rubles” independent Russian political analyst Kirill Rogov argued that rocketing death benefit and live troop costs have left Moscow struggling to find manpower to sustain ongoing attacks, and have already prevented the Kremlin from forming a strategic reserve of troops for a planned spring-summer offensive in Ukraine.
Russian casualty rates are unlikely to change quickly, that analysis said, because Ukrainian defense tactics aiming to cause maximum casualties have been consistently effective for more than a year, and have a history of improving in effectiveness over time, that analysis said.
Ukraine’s army commander Oleksandr Sysrky in mid-January claimed that for the first time in the war his troops had confirmed they had killed or seriously wounded more Russian soldiers in a month, than the Kremlin had been able to recruit. On Feb. 11, Syrsky’s boss, President Volodymyr Zelensky, told reporters that was still the situation. Western sources, among them the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), in February confirmed Russian forces appeared to be losing troops faster than the Kremlin could recruit them.
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, on Jan. 16 claimed Russian army recruiting was going well and that in 2025 the government had slightly exceeded recruiting targets.
On the front lines, according to both Ukrainian army daily situation reports and battle information feeds from units in sectors most targeted for Russian army assaults, in a typical day of winter combat Russian Federation forces launch from 5 to 15 small-scale infantry assaults across the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) long fighting front, and most of the attacks are usually destroyed by Ukrainian drones and artillery.
Pressure and sometimes lawlessness by Russian recruiters searching for more men to serve as volunteers in forces invading Ukraine, and coerce those unwilling to fight, are widely documented.
The CIT report cited a military police raid in the central city Saratov targeting 250 migrant, non-Russian workers of whom 20 were detained by authorities and sent to a local draft office. In another incident described in the report, Russian conscripts en route by train to a non-combat unit in a Far Eastern region were subjected to days of physical and mental abuse by escort officers wanting them to volunteer for war service.
Ukrainian military activist platforms throughout have documented Russian army reluctance to acknowledge soldiers killed in action, using open source complaints by thousands of family members searching for information about husbands, sons, or brothers sent to Ukraine in uniform and missing in action.
On Feb. 16 the Russo-Ukrainian activist group Ne Zhdi Khoroshie Novosti, published details of claims by four Russian family members demanding authorities either find a service member or declare him dead so that death benefits might be paid, and video accounts by two soldiers stating for the record that their commanders had thrown them into battle unprepared and with practically no chance of survival.
A video complaint by the wife of Aleksandr Makarov, a fighter in Russia’s 254th Motor Rifle Regiment, 20th Guards Combined Arms Army, said unit doctors ignored her husband’s medical disabilities including open wounds, withered leg, and inability to walk without a crutch to declare him fit for service. Kyiv Post could not independently confirm the account but supporting documents of the woman’s complaint were consistent with Russian army practice.
A video complaint by wife Nadezhda Ivanova said that her husband, while serving with Russia’s 506th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, had disappeared in fall 2024 after being sent into combat despite a debilitating wound (eye hit by shrapnel) from an earlier engagement, and that since then his unit was refusing to acknowledge he was missing in action and instead had declared him a deserter.
Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US.