Russia recruited ~166,000 new soldiers in the first half of 2024

Russian federal spending data suggests an increase in recruitment in Q2 over Q1. On average, 1,000 Russians signed up for the military every day (but there's a caveat).

In August, iStories published a very interesting piece on Russian army recruitment. They estimated the number of new recruits based on federal budget spending on recruitment bonuses and found that in the first quarter of 2024, bonuses were paid for 73,400 soldiers.

Source: https://istories.media/en/stories/2024/08/01/more-soldiers-at-all-costs/

Thankfully, iStories explained their methodology, which allowed me to reconstruct their calculation. The federal signing bonus is budget line 3141093514 (for the Minoborony - about 98% of new contracts) and budget line 5040193514 (for the National Guard - about 2% of new contracts).

In the first quarter of 2024, Russia spent RUB 14.3 billion on these two items combined. Dividing this total by the federal signing bonus (195,000 rubles until August 2024), we get a total of 73.4 thousand new contracts, as the analysis of iStories showed.

In the second quarter of 2024, Russia spent 18.1 billion rubles on the federal signing bonus. This would mean 92.9 thousand new contracts.

Source: Own chart based on Russian budget listing, July 2024.

The budget data suggests that 166,000 new contracts were signed in the first half of 2024. This is not too far off from a statement made by Dmitri Medvedev in July: He claimed that 190,000 new contracts had been signed.

It is important to emphasize one caveat: the time when a new contract starts and the time when federal money is spent on the signing bonus may not coincide. While the quarterly data probably gives a fairly accurate picture of the overall success of Russian recruitment, any short-term changes should be taken with a grain of salt.