Russian regions continue cutting one-off payments to soldiers signing contracts with the Ministry of Defense. While the signing bonuses rose sharply in previous years amid the need to recruit personnel for the war against Ukraine, in the fall of 2025 a reverse trend began, with more than ten Russian regions lowering their payments. Earlier this year, the signing bonus was cut in the Sverdlovsk and Irkutsk regions, followed most recently by a further reduction in the Irkutsk Region in September.
One of the sharpest cuts happened in Mordovia. On Aug. 18, the republic’s authorities set the lump-sum payment for new contract soldiers at 3 million rubles, but by Sept. 15 they had already cut it back down to 800,000 rubles. In other words, the increased payment lasted less than a month.
Mordovia has had trouble financing these payments. In June, when head of the republic Artem Zdunov publicly looked into reasons why payments to some service members had been suspended since the start of the year, the regional finance ministry explained its position by citing “limited budget resources.” Zdunov nevertheless demanded the payments be resumed.
In September, the Irkutsk Region cut its signing bonus from 2.1 million to 1.8 million rubles, with governor Igor Kobzev pointing to the need to meet military recruitment targets despite “the challenging task of executing the region’s 2026 budget.” Notably, the region decided to spend more money directly on recruitment, raising the fee for a middleman who brings in a foreign national to 1.5 million rubles, and 800,000 for a Russian from another region.
The Irkutsk Region had also cut payments in early 2026: contract soldiers who signed up in January were entitled to 1.4 million rubles in additional payments, while those who enlisted in February and March got 1 million. A similar situation occurred in Kuzbass, where payments were lowered amid a regional budget deficit. However, in March, The Insider counted at least ten other regions that kept raising their payments.
This past May, the Sverdlovsk Region reduced its regional payment from 2.7 million to 2.5 million rubles. Regional authorities did not give a specific reason, saying only that the decision had been based on “a combination of factors.”
The mass reduction of bonuses was first observed back in the fall of 2025, when at least nine regions cut payments in October alone, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe’s estimates. In Tatarstan, the regional bonus fell from 2.7 million to 400,000 rubles; in Mari El, from 2.6 million to 400,000; in Chuvashia, from 2.1 million to 400,000. Cuts also occurred in the Nizhny Novgorod, Ulyanovsk, and Orenburg regions, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and Bashkortostan. In the Samara Region, bonus payments had reached 3.6 million rubles in early 2025, but before October it had already dropped to 400,000.
Today, the situation with contract military service is markedly different from 2024 and the first half of 2025, when regions competed for recruits by steadily raising enlistment bonuses. Now some regions are lowering them to initial levels, despite persistent personnel shortages at the front.
According to an estimate by economist Janis Kluge, cited by the Conflict Intelligence Team, some 234,000 people signed Defense Ministry contracts between January and August 2026, compared with 260,000 in the same period of 2025 — roughly 10% fewer. This estimate is based on budget data, not official Defense Ministry statistics.
