Russia|Independent Russian researchers have calculated that in the period of last year, Russia paid soldiers and their families around 28-30 billion euros in salaries and other compensation.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The Re:Russia project published a study on the salaries and compensation of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The compensations to the relatives of the deceased have been around 7 billion euros.
The total cost of all compensations has been around 30 billion euros.
Russian opposition project Re:Russia published by on Tuesday, a study that calculated how much money Russia has spent on its soldiers operating in Ukraine and on supporting the families of fallen soldiers. The study covered the period from July 2023 to June 2024.
Over the past year and a half, Russia has successfully replenished its army with volunteers who have been lured to the front with large monetary rewards. In addition to the monthly salary of 210,000–240,000 rubles, or about 2,100–2,400 euros, the soldiers are paid a lot of additional allowances from both the Ministry of Defense and the local authorities of the volunteer housing areas.
Immediately after signing the contract, a considerable sum is transferred to the bank account of the new mercenary. The amount depends on the residential area and is from 200,000 rubles to more than a million rubles. One of the most tangible offers is promised in the Leningrad region, located on the Finnish border.
On Wednesday, the regional government announced that the one-time payment, which will be paid to those who signed the contract by the end of the summer, will be 1.5 million rubles (about 15,000 euros). The amount consists of “a payment directly from the region’s budget and a payment from the federal budget and extra-budgetary sources”, tells Leningrad regional administration of the Vyborg region.
Money attracts. At the beginning of July, the vice-chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev announced, that the Russian army has no shortage of human resources. On average, about a thousand Russians sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense every day.
Re: Russia-experts estimate that the total compensation paid to soldiers in the last 12 months has been 16–18 billion euros. This includes both salary and one-time payments for signing the contract.
Estimates of expenses are complicated by the fact that the exact number of Russians fighting in Ukraine is not known. In June 2024, the president Vladimir Putin spoke of nearly 700,000 people. In February 2024, Britain’s Royal United Services Institute evaluate the number of Russian troops in the occupied territories is 470,000 people.
After analyzing data from various sources, Re:Russia researchers came to the conclusion that from July 2023 to June 2024, the number of Russian troops in Ukraine has varied between 500,000 and 600,000 people.
Knowledge monetary rewards paid to all those who signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense are widely advertised in Russia. Posters and other advertising can be found all over the country.
The mandatory business launch announced in September 2022 led to questionable results for the Kremlin. A large number of men simply left the country during that time, and relatives of soldiers still at the front organize more and more various anti-war demonstrations.
to Russia a significant item of expenditure is also compensation for those killed and wounded in the war. The Ministry of Defense’s official one-time compensation for being injured is around 30,000 euros, but other social expenses and insurance compensation are immediately added to it. The costs related to these injuries have probably gone to around five billion euros per year.
The family of each deceased is entitled to several large compensations. This includes 5 million rubles from the Ministry of Defense, 4.9 million rubles from the government, 3.3 million rubles from insurance and regional compensation ranging from one to three million rubles. In total, these sums create a compensation pot of at least 14.2 million rubles, or about 142,000 euros per fallen soldier.
Russia does not officially release information on the number of its soldiers killed in Ukraine. One of the most reliable sources of information in this matter can be the joint project of Mediazona and BBC News, which analyzes data from the deceased’s open sources – social media posts, obituaries of employees of various institutions and legal proceedings in inheritance matters.
The latest, June 24 published according to the report, there have been around 120,000 deaths since February 2024. Of them, around 50,000 have died in the last 12 months.
Based on this information, Re:Russia comes to the conclusion that during the investigated period, the state has paid about 700 billion rubles (about 7 billion euros) to the relatives of the dead.
Thus therefore, the total costs of all the compensations mentioned above have been 28–30 billion euros. This is about 1.5 percent compared to Russia’s predicted gross domestic product of about 1.9 trillion euros in 2024.
The share of all Russian military expenditures compared to GDP this year is about seven percent, research institute Sipri has evaluated.
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