Russia needs an enormous number of new soldiers just to keep its forces in Ukraine at roughly their current strength. Depending on the casualty estimate, Moscow may have to find 30,000 to 35,000 replacements every month.
That means recruiting roughly 400,000 people every year. So where does Russia keep finding them?
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Think of it like driving for Uber during bad weather. When it starts raining, Uber raises the rate. Some drivers decide the additional money is worth the additional risk. But if the streets begin flooding and cars are being swept away, the price must rise considerably before anyone agrees to drive.
Russia is doing the same thing with military service.
The Russian government currently advertises a federal signing payment of 400,000 rubles and monthly compensation beginning at roughly 220,000 rubles. That monthly pay alone is considerably higher than what many Russians can earn in civilian employment.
But the federal payment is only the floor. The real money comes from regional governments.
Russia’s regions are effectively bidding against one another for soldiers. According to the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo, 35 regions increased their contract payments during the first months of 2026. St. Petersburg advertised the highest regional payment at 4.1 million rubles, in addition to the federal bonus.
For someone from an impoverished region, that can represent several years of civilian income delivered almost immediately.
Russia also advertises combat bonuses for advancing, destroying equipment or capturing Western weapons. The official recruiting material lists payments for everything from each kilometer gained during an offensive to the destruction of a tank, helicopter or HIMARS launcher.
I would treat those promises like a combat-zone sales brochure. They exist on paper. Whether an individual rifleman can document the event, receive credit and actually collect the money is another question.
The broader benefits package includes debt relief, tax and credit holidays, medical care, rehabilitation, veteran status, housing assistance and educational support for children. The pitch is not simply, “Serve your country.”
It is: sign this contract and solve every financial problem your family has.
Russia has also started paying people to recruit other people. Police officers, prison employees, municipal officials, military commissariat personnel and ordinary citizens can receive referral payments for producing new contract soldiers. Important Stories reported that recruiter payments have spread across roughly half of Russia’s regions, with some bonuses reaching hundreds of thousands of rubles for a single recruit.
That creates an entire class of people with a financial interest in finding the next soldier.
Russia is also tailoring its advertising. Its new unmanned-systems formations are marketed toward gamers, programmers, robotics specialists and technically minded students. Instead of showing a man freezing in a trench, the advertisement shows drones, artificial intelligence and computer screens.
Your weapon is technology.
That probably sounds much better than: you may spend the next six months hiding from Ukrainian artillery in a hole outside Kupiansk. But money and advertising are only part of the system.
Russia also recruits prisoners, pretrial detainees, migrants and foreigners who may be offered citizenship, freedom or relief from legal problems. The Associated Press has documented allegations that some conscripts are pressured into signing contracts and that foreigners have been misled about the work they would perform. Contracts advertised as lasting one year may also be automatically extended for the duration of the mobilization.
That changes the nature of the offer considerably.
The United States also used enlistment and retention bonuses during the Global War on Terror. Paying more for dangerous or difficult military jobs is not uniquely Russian. The difference is the breadth of the recruiting pool and the amount of pressure being applied. Russia is scraping manpower from almost every population it can reach: poor regions, prisons, migrant communities, foreign labor pools, indebted men, students and people who have run out of better options.
The Kremlin is trying to avoid another politically dangerous mass mobilization by replacing it with a market. But this is not a normal labor market. It combines money, propaganda, desperation and coercion.
Russia can probably continue finding soldiers.
The more important question is how much it must eventually pay to persuade the next 400,000 people to sign.
