Russia still recruits 1,000 soldiers per day, but costs continue to rise
Recent increases in sign-on bonuses in several regions suggest mounting pressure to boost the number of recruits.
According to the latest regional budget data, Russian recruitment picked up again over the summer after slowing down in May. In August, the estimated number of new contracts was nearly 35,000.
Early in 2025, sign-on bonuses increased in many regions, but then stabilized, with some regions even lowering their payouts. On average, however, regional bonuses never decreased significantly. A new round of bonus increases began in June 2025 (to name a few examples: Irkutsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Sevastopol, Tambovsk, Tver, Vladimir...). Increasing payouts indicate that regions are struggling to reach their recruitment quotas. Ultimately, the average bonus size is the best indicator of Russian recruitment difficulty. This makes it one of the most important metrics of this war. At some point, the Kremlin may be forced to abandon its voluntary recruitment model for another round of mobilization.
But this moment is probably still at least a year away. If we only consider regional and federal sign-on bonuses, the average cost to recruit a contract soldier has increased from 1.5 million rubles in January 2025 to approximately 2 million rubles today. By the end of 2025, the cost per soldier will likely rise to 2.5 million rubles. While this is expensive, especially given budgetary constraints, it is in principle feasible to continue this model into next year. At 2 million rubles per soldier, signing 35,000 soldiers would cost 70 billion rubles (840 billion rubles per year, or 0.4% of GDP). At 2.5 million per soldier, the cost of recruitment would increase to 0.5% of GDP. Of course, this is not the full picture because federal and regional bonuses only account for a portion of recruitment costs and a small percentage of total personnel costs, including soldiers’ pay, compensation, and pensions.
Currently, most of the bonus expenditures come from regional budgets. August was the most expensive month of the year so far, with an estimated 55 billion rubles spent on regional sign-on bonuses alone.
You may have noted that regional and federal budget data from the second quarter of 2025 show a very different picture. As iStories reported, federal budget expenditures indicated only 37,900 new contract soldiers for the April–June period, while my estimate, based on regional data, is 89,500. This discrepancy is likely due to irregular spending patterns at the federal level. Although federal data has many advantages over regional data, such as covering all of Russia and having a constant federal bonus for a year, making calculations more reliable, it is less resilient against technical changes in budget execution. Since almost all of the observed 37 regional budgets have shown consistent spending on bonuses without significant changes in recent months, it is highly unlikely that recruitment has decreased by more than half.
Anthropology research (Amazon etc) reveals that in tribal societies at least 40% of males were eventually dying in warfare, without negative impact on the tribe breeding rate (deaths were distributed far enough into the adult age).
Simple math shows that Muscovy, with their about 1000 casualties per month, fits comfortably below that 40% norm. So, from the anthropology standpoint, they can keep this up indefinitely.
And the rest of the Muscovy tribe can easily supply the necessary amounts of war paint, arrows, spearheads and other necessities.
The Western opinions that Muscovy society and economy will eventually break under the strain of the war are unfounded.