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.
There is one huge unknown: how many of this signing bonuses are paid to really new recruits? There were references in local press (including Chechen/Kadyrov channels but not limited to them) to the volunteers who served at the front several times during the war, and every time they were recorded as new ones. It all depends on the duration of the contract. If it is relatively short-term (say, a month, or two-three months), the overall number of signing bonuses ought to be divided by an unknown coefficient, possibly larger than 2 or even 3.
Assuming bonuses were not privatised, it still means Russia fails to meet its recruitment targets. To replace casualties and grow army and navy and replace retirements across whole army they would need closer to 250,000 per six month. There is a gap of several 10,000
On the other side, the army consumes now > 2/3 of a year getting 18. With all the exceptions from draft - they can not keep that over a long time. Choice will be soldiers or tanks.