The Price of Attrition: The Kremlin’s expenditure on ‘manpower’ amounts to 6 trillion roubles a year, but this is still not enough for a successful ‘ground’ offensive

Contract price

Over the past month, the maximum regional bonuses for signing a contract with the Ministry of Defence have risen sharply after an extended pause. As a result, the cost of an ‘effective’ contract has almost reached 3 million roubles, having increased by nearly 50% over the past year (see Figure 1 and the table in the Appendix).

Researcher Janis Kluge estimates the average cost of a military recruitment contract using data from a subset of regional budgets, which he then extrapolates to Russia as a whole. According to his estimates, by August 2026 the average regional signing bonus had reached approximately 1.65 million roubles. Including the federal payment of 400,000 roubles, the total exceeded 2 million roubles. This is almost identical to the simple average of all announced regional signing bonuses, at 1.74 million roubles. Our calculation of the price of an ‘effective’ contract is based on a different assumption. Whilst the bonuses declared by the regions vary significantly, with 20 regions offering 500,000 roubles or less and 14 offering 3 million roubles or more, it is possible to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence outside one’s region of residence. We assume that people heading to war generally sign contracts in regions offering higher payments. Consequently, the average contract price calculated from the bonuses announced by regions across Russia as a whole is likely to significantly underestimate the average amount actually paid for most contracts.

We refer to such a contract as ‘effective’ and, to calculate its price, we use a sample of the 24 regions with the highest payments. This provides a sufficiently broad range of the highest bonuses, with extensive geographical coverage. Regional increases in contract bonuses have been uneven and, at first glance, fairly erratic. As we noted in previous analyses (→ Re: Russia: From Living Force to Dead; Re: Russia: The Price of Donbas), the composition of the group of the most ‘generous’ regions is variable: some wealthy regions feature almost continuously, others appear regularly, while some make the list only occasionally. As a result, the burden of financing expensive recruitment contracts is distributed across different regional budgets.

At the end of September, the calculated cost of an ‘effective’ contract reached 3.4 million roubles, including the federal payment, while the average regional bonus across the 24 regions stood at 2.99 million roubles (see Figure 1 and the table in the Appendix; we exclude additional municipal payments, as these are generally conditional on residence in the municipality). At the end of September, six regions were offering contracts worth around 3.5 million roubles, another eight were offering approximately 3 million, and six were close to the lower end of the range, at 2.5 million roubles. The current leaders are Magadan Oblast, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, each offering 3.6 million roubles. These regions have occupied leading positions for almost the entire period covered by our observations. St Petersburg completes the top five. It topped the ranking in May, with a bonus of 4.1 million roubles, but is now reportedly planning to cut payments by more than half, according to some reports.

Over the two years from September 2024 to September 2026, the average ‘effective’ signing bonus across the leading 24 regions increased 2.5-fold, from 1.2 million to 3 million roubles. Growth was particularly rapid between September 2024 and April 2025, when bonuses rose by almost 60% in six months. The pace subsequently slowed, with an increase of just around 10% over the following six months. This coincided with a marked deterioration in regional finances. In May 2025, regional own-source revenues increased by 1.5 trillion roubles, while expenditure rose by 2 trillion roubles, according to data from the Ministry of Finance. Regional finances entered a period of persistent deficits, which reached 1.5 trillion roubles by the end of the year. Shorter periods of accelerated growth in average bonuses among the leading regions were nevertheless observed in early autumn 2025 and during the first months of 2026. In April 2026, bonus growth virtually stalled and remained subdued until August, when bonuses surged by almost 10% in a single month. Overall, the increase in bonuses in the year to September 2026 was 43%, compared with 70% in the preceding year.

Figure 1. Trends in the average signing bonuses for the leading 24 regions, 2024–2026, million roubles

Recruitment and losses

The cost of an ‘effective’ contract is a key indicator for assessing manpower expenditure borne by the consolidated budget of the Russian Federation. Such expenditure has become a significant component of military spending during the current protracted war. A substantial share of these costs falls on regional rather than federal budgets. To assess the overall scale of this expenditure, which Re:Russia updates approximately every six months, it is first necessary to estimate the current number of contracts being signed and the size of the Russian force engaged in military operations.

In the first half of 2026, according to Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council, approximately 200,000 contract soldiers (an average of 33,000 per month) and 16,000 volunteers joined the Russian armed forces. This is slightly below, but broadly in line with the recruitment figures for 2025 announced by Medvedev himself: more than 422,000 contract soldiers (35,000 per month) and 32,000 volunteers. However, the publication Important Stories concludes, based on its own calculations using data from the federal budget, that 364,000 people signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence over the whole of 2025, approximately 15% fewer than Medvedev reported. Kluge estimates that 263,000 contract soldiers were recruited in the first nine months of 2026, 10% fewer than in the same period of 2025 (292,000). This equates to 29,000 per month. Thus, the official position is that recruitment has remained at around 35,000 personnel per month over the past two years, while independent experts tend to believe that, since late 2025, the figure has been closer to 30,000. Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi gives the same estimate of 30,000 recruits per month for the first half of 2026.

The central question in the debate over actual contract recruitment rates is whether the Russian army is managing to replace its battlefield losses. The only consistent time series covering these losses, including both killed and wounded personnel, is provided by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and British military intelligence appear to draw on the same data. The project tracking confirmed casualties, run by Russian volunteers in collaboration with Mediazona and the BBC remains significant but does not capture current losses. According to an estimate by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian monthly casualties reached 46,230 in September. Total casualties for the first nine months of 2026 amounted to 327,000, while cumulative losses since the start of the full-scale invasion exceeded 1.5 million. British Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton cited the same figures in mid-September, adding that approximately 500,000 of these losses were killed.

Monthly data from the Ukrainian Armed Forces paint the following picture for the past two years. In the first half of 2025, Russian casualties were high, reaching 38,000 per month. In the second half of the year, they fell to 31,000 and remained at roughly that level for the first five months of 2026. They then began to rise sharply, reaching an average of 42,600 per month over the past four months. On a standardised monthly basis, Russian casualties averaged 34,900 in 2025 and 32,600 in the first half of 2026.

Figure 2. Russian army casualty rates according to data from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 2025–2026, in thousands

Total Russian army casualties in 2025 and the first half of 2026 amounted to 614,000 personnel. For 2025 and the first nine months of 2026, the figure had already reached 745,000. According to Medvedev’s statements, recruitment over 2025 and the first half of this year exceeded losses, totalling approximately 670,000 personnel (622,000 contract soldiers and 48,000 volunteers, although the composition of this latter group is unclear and may include prisoners). If Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualty levels in recent months are accurate, losses began to exceed recruitment in numerical terms at the start of the summer. Based on Kluge’s extrapolations, approximately 700,000 people may have been recruited under contract over the course of 2025 and the first nine months of 2026. Under this scenario, recruitment had already ceased to keep pace with losses in the spring of this year. However, the arithmetic balance does not necessarily reflect the actual situation: the Russian authorities do not allow personnel with light or even moderate wounds to demobilise, meaning that some of those counted among the ‘casualties’ may subsequently return to the front.

There is, however, another dimension to manpower dynamics: estimates of the overall size of the Russian force in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian military statements, the force continued to grow throughout 2025 and 2026. In early 2025, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, the force numbered ‘slightly more than’ 600,000. In December 2025, the then Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Syrskyi, believed that by the start of the year the force would reach 710,000 personnel, whilst by the middle of the year he estimated it at 720,000. In June 2026, Putin described the size of the force as numbering ‘more than 700,000’. Thus, between early 2025 and June 2026, the Russian force in Ukraine grew by approximately 115,000 personnel, according to Ukrainian military estimates. Over the same period, the Ukrainian General Staff recorded 615,000 Russian casualties, both killed and wounded, while Medvedev’s figures suggest that Russia recruited 670,000 personnel. These figures are consistent if approximately 60,000 troops, or around 10% of total casualties, returned to the front after being wounded. Under the estimates of independent analysts, including Kluge and Important Stories, approximately 40,000 more personnel would have had to return to service, equivalent to around 18% of total reported ‘casualties’.

Overall, the three data series, covering casualties, recruitment and the size of the deployed force, are broadly consistent with one another. However, they suggest that Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties overstate irrecoverable losses by 10–20%, if interpreted as permanent losses, as is customary in this type of statistical reporting. Incidentally, in the second half of August, Vadym Skibitsky, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate, estimated the Russian force at 735,000 personnel, comprising 670,000 combat troops and 65,000 in reserve. This suggests that, despite casualties rising to more than 40,000 per month, now clearly exceeding current recruitment, the force continued to grow slowly even during the summer of 2026.

At the same time, the Ukrainian army’s sustained counterattacks in recent months, which have returned some territory previously captured by Russian forces to Ukrainian control, point clearly to a shift in the balance of forces on the ground. This contrasts with 2024 and 2025, when such reversals did not occur. It is also worth noting that, judging by the reviews published by Ivan Filippov’s channel, concerns about manpower shortages have featured increasingly prominently and insistently in Russian military bloggers’ explanations for the army’s recent failures. However, both developments may reflect not so much a decline in the influx of new contract soldiers or in the size of the Russian force, but rather, on the one hand, the growing number of axes on which the Russian army is attempting to advance and, on the other, the expansion of Ukraine’s drone capabilities in both defence and offence. This interpretation is also supported by the 30–40% increase in Russian casualties in recent months compared with the average for the preceding 12 months, amid more intense fighting, according to Ukrainian data.

The overall picture, then, is as follows. Despite high casualties in early 2025 and during the summer and autumn of 2026, contract recruitment and the return of wounded personnel to the front, or an overstatement of losses in Ukrainian data, enabled the Russian force engaged in the war to grow from 600,000 personnel in early 2025 to around 730,000 by late summer 2026, an increase of more than 20%. However, whereas the force expanded by approximately 15% in 2025, growth over the first eight months of this year amounted to only around 5%. This does not rule out the possibility that the pace of contract recruitment slowed in 2026. Nevertheless, the overall balance between casualties, recruitment and the return of wounded personnel to active service remains modestly positive. Yet, against the backdrop of growing Ukrainian firepower, this positive balance is still insufficient to enable the Russian army to conduct successful offensives on several axes while maintaining its defences simultaneously.

The cost of the contract army

To estimate the expenditure incurred by regional and federal budgets on the Russian contract army fighting in Ukraine, we use Medvedev’s figure of 33,000 recruits per month under contract over the past six months. We currently estimate the average regional payment for an ‘effective’ contract at 2.99 million roubles, up from 2.7 million five months ago. Including the federal payment, the corresponding totals are 3.4 million and 3.1 million roubles, respectively. There has recently been a growing body of evidence of forced contract signing. In such cases, victims of state coercion are compelled to sign contracts at the rates offered in their respective regions (see reports by Mediazona, Novaya Gazeta Europe and Verstka). It may therefore be appropriate to apply a discount of 10–15% to the ‘effective’ contract price to account for such cases. At the same time, a substantial market in recruitment intermediaries has developed in Russia over the past six months. These services help identify potential contract soldiers and are financed to a significant extent by local budgets (→ The Insider: Cannon Fodder Hunters; Important Stories: Training in Handling Objections; Important Stories: In 2026, average monthly expenditure on payments to recruiters more than doubled). A particularly illustrative case emerged in Nizhny Tagil, where an intermediary recruited 580 contract soldiers and received 260 million roubles in compensation, equivalent to 450,000 roubles per person. The signing bonus in Sverdlovsk Oblast is 2.5 million roubles, but in this case the total cost to the local authorities appears to have been close to 3 million roubles per recruit. Reports of regional administrations entering into contracts with recruitment agencies have emerged from numerous regions. We therefore leave the estimated cost of an ‘effective’ contract undiscounted in our calculations, on the assumption that any reduction in the average bonus due to coercive recruitment is broadly offset by additional expenditure on intermediaries.

Based on these assumptions, taking into account changes in the cost of an ‘effective’ contract and an estimated recruitment rate of 33,000 contracts per month, the total cost of signing bonuses over the past six months, from April to September, can be estimated at 630 billion roubles. Of this, 550 billion roubles fell on regional budgets and 80 billion on the federal budget. Federal budget expenditure was slightly lower after deducting federal payments withheld from prisoners who signed contracts; these payments to Russian citizens were discontinued in January 2025. Over the next six months, assuming the usual rate of increase in contract prices, approximately 20% over six months, and an unchanged recruitment rate, the total cost is projected to reach around 730 billion roubles, of which 650 billion would fall on regional budgets. These calculations exclude municipal signing bonuses because no comprehensive statistics are available.

The second major category of manpower expenditure is military pay and allowances. In our previous estimate, we put this at 240,000 roubles per person per month, including supplements and bonuses on top of the basic rate of 210,000 roubles. As the anticipated indexation of pay was never carried out, we are retaining the same figure. With the average size of the Russian force over the past six months estimated at around 720,000 personnel, paying their salaries and allowances would have cost the budget approximately 173 billion roubles per month, or 1.04 trillion roubles over six months. If the force remains at its current size of 735,000 personnel over the next six months, military pay and allowances will amount to approximately 1.06 trillion roubles.

Finally, manpower expenditure includes compensation for deaths and injuries. As we noted previously, when setting these payments, the Russian government appears to have explicitly taken life insurance calculations into account, establishing a ‘price of life’ at levels justified by market considerations. In other words, from a pragmatic perspective, these amounts are set at levels that ordinary people would regard as ‘fair’. In our previous estimate, we put the federal death benefit at 14 million roubles: a 5 million rouble ‘presidential’ payment, 3.68 million roubles in insurance compensation and 5.52 million roubles under the law on military pay and allowances. This total has risen slightly since then, as the insurance component was indexed by 4% in 2026. We therefore estimate the current total at 14.2 million roubles.

Many analysts, OSINT investigators and military personnel argue that the proportion of fatalities in the current form of warfare is exceptionally high, partly because evacuating wounded soldiers from the battlefield has become extremely difficult under pervasive drone surveillance and infiltration tactics. The Ukrainian command has sometimes claimed that up to 60% of those included in its casualty figures are killed. We adopt a more conservative estimate, assuming that fatalities account for one-third of total casualties. According to data from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian casualties over the past six months totalled 237,000 personnel, including approximately 80,000 killed. This implies federal death benefit payments of around 1.14 trillion roubles, rounded to the nearest 10 billion. Regional authorities also pay their own death benefits, but the amounts vary considerably and are frequently revised. In particular, media reports suggest that these payments have recently been cut substantially. We therefore make no attempt to include this component in our calculations.

Another category of manpower expenditure is compensation for injuries. We assume that, of the remaining casualties after fatalities are deducted, one-third involve injuries resulting in disability, compensated at 4 million roubles, or other severe injuries, compensated at 3 million roubles. A further third are assumed to involve minor injuries, compensated at 1 million roubles, while the final third involve the least severe injuries, compensated at 100,000 roubles. On this basis, compensation paid to wounded personnel over the past six months amounts to approximately 245 billion roubles at current rates. Regional and municipal payments are again excluded.

Taken together, these estimates put the cost of manpower for the Russian force fighting in Ukraine over the past six months of hostilities at just over 3 trillion roubles (3.05 trillion), of which 2.5 trillion roubles falls on the federal budget and 550 billion on regional budgets. Under an inertial scenario, in which current trends continue, the total will rise to 3.2 trillion roubles over the next six months, with the regional share increasing by 100 billion roubles (see Table 1).

Table 1. Manpower costs over six months, billion roubles

Trends in manpower costs

A new ‘partial’ mobilisation, a scenario repeatedly raised by the Ukrainian side and widely debated in Russia, would not be cheap either, although a greater share of the costs would fall on the federal budget. This scenario envisages a rapid, large-scale expansion of the Russian force in Ukraine. Citing intelligence reports, Zelensky claims that, as in 2022, Putin intends to mobilise around 300,000 people. This is below the number needed to replenish the Russian army over a full year. However, the Kremlin may be counting on mobilisation to bring the war to an end within six months.

Mobilisation, meanwhile, is not cost-free. The Kremlin seeks to soften its impact with a cash payment. In 2022, those mobilised received a one-off federal payment of 195,000 roubles, alongside regional payments ranging widely from 50,000 to 300,000 roubles or more, depending on the region. We believe that payments under a new mobilisation would be higher, amounting to at least 500,000 roubles per person in total. This would bring the cost of these payments to 150 billion roubles, shared between federal and regional budgets. In practice, the payments would probably be higher still, and it is reasonable to estimate them at up to 200 billion roubles. Mobilisation would increase the size of the Russian force in Ukraine to more than one million personnel. Additional expenditure on pay and allowances over six months, allowing for a gradual reduction in force strength as a result of unreplaced losses, would amount to approximately 340 billion roubles. Thus, under a new wave of mobilisation, expenditure would shift from the projected 730 billion roubles in contract signing bonuses to around 500–540 billion roubles in additional pay and allowances and one-off payments, generating savings of approximately 200 billion roubles.

Overall, the updated calculations are consistent with our previous estimates, despite revisions to some assumptions and figures, and demonstrate a striking, sustained increase in manpower expenditure. In our initial estimate, these costs amounted to around 2 trillion roubles in the first half of 2025, equivalent to approximately 2% of GDP on an annualised basis. By mid-2026, they had reached 3 trillion roubles, or 2.6% of GDP on an annualised basis. Over the next six months, even under the most conservative scenario, they will rise by a further 200 billion roubles (Table 2). The composition of expenditure has also remained relatively stable. Contract signing bonuses account for just over 20% of the total, military pay and allowances for just over 30%, while compensation for fatalities is the largest single component (Table 3). This is a particularly important point: as casualty numbers rise, payments for fatalities account for the largest share of the overall increase in expenditure.

Table 2. Manpower costs in 2025–2027, trillion roubles

Figure 3. Composition of manpower costs, 2026, %

These calculations are based on a highly tentative and conservative estimate of the proportion of fatalities among total casualties. In our forecast for the next six months, we assume that the overall number of casualties will remain at the level recorded in the previous six-month period, although the rate has risen noticeably in recent months. If average monthly casualties remain at the level seen over the past four months (42,600 people), expenditure on compensation for fatalities and injuries will increase by approximately 110 billion roubles, while total manpower costs will rise from 3.2 trillion to 3.3 trillion roubles. However, the large number of personnel listed as ‘missing’ gives the Russian authorities scope to delay payments under this heading.

The full range of manpower costs exceeds these estimates, which do not include regional and municipal payments, compensation or social assistance for the families of those killed or wounded. The figures also indicate that a substantial share of this expenditure is incurred outside the federal budget’s defence spending lines, meaning that the budget provides a far from complete picture of the actual cost of the war. Finally, there is a notable correlation between the growth in manpower expenditure and the deficits of both the federal and consolidated budgets.

Appendix. Top 24 regions by size of signing bonuses, 2024–2026, million roubles