The Price of Donbas: The Kremlin's manpower costs in a new offensive would exceed 5 trillion roubles
Donald Trump is increasing pressure on Kyiv, forcing it to agree to Russia's demand for the voluntary transfer of northern Donbas. At the same time, Russian command has already begun preparations for a new offensive in the spring and summer of 2026.
However, its prospects do not appear encouraging. The Russian side has been unable to accumulate sufficient manpower reserves for a decisive battle for the ‘fortress belt’ of the Kramatorsk agglomeration, the most heavily fortified military area in Ukraine.
This bridgehead is a central asset in Ukraine’s war of attrition strategy, which relies on grinding down enemy manpower through exhausting defence in the expectation that Russia’s mobilisation resources will be depleted.
This strategy is debated among experts, yet it allows Ukraine to reduce to zero the balance between Moscow’s recruitment of new contract soldiers and losses at the front. As a result, the Russian army lacks the resources for a tactical breakthrough, while the Kremlin is forced continually to raise recruitment payments and to absorb the costs of colossal losses.
As a result, manpower has become one of the most expensive military resources for the Kremlin. According to Re:Russia's calculations, taking into account rising payments to contract soldiers and extremely high losses, the cost of manpower during an active offensive has risen to an astronomical 5.1 trillion roubles annually. This sum is equivalent to 90% of the federal budget deficit projected for 2025.
Conversely, the transfer of northern Donbas to Russian control would allow Vladimir Putin to retain a combat-ready 600,000-strong force that could be deployed in a new offensive, and would free up about 4 trillion roubles amid a looming budget crisis linked to falling oil prices.
Two wars of attrition
President Trump is increasing pressure on Kyiv to accept Moscow’s demand to transfer to its control territories in northern Donbas that the Russian army has failed to capture over four years of war. Meanwhile, Russian command has already begun preparations for a new spring and summer offensive in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). According to their estimates, as part of these preparations, Russia is striking ground communication lines supplying the front lines of the Ukrainian Armed Forces towards Sloviansk and Huliaipole. So far, however, these strikes have not been translated into operational gains.
The Russian army has also failed to capture Lyman (northeast of Sloviansk), which is important for further offensive operations. Recent successful counterattacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Kupiansk have diverted Russian reserves away from the Lyman axis. Nor has Russia achieved notable progress in the fighting for Kostiantynivka, south of Sloviansk. The most successful advance came late last year in Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces achieved a breakthrough towards Huliaipole. By now, the district centre, with a pre-war population of around 13,000, has most likely been captured, according to ISW experts. However, further advances here are unlikely unless command makes this sector of the front a priority at the expense of other directions.
As part of preparations for a spring and summer offensive, Russian command has, since the second half of 2025, been attempting to form a strategic reserve from new recruits. So far, however, this has proved impossible due to high losses along the front line, forcing command to deploy operational reserves to sustain ongoing combat operations. Ukrainian military analyst Kostyantyn Mashovets notes that at present the Russian strike groupings intended for the spring and summer offensive are bogged down in tactical fighting. Throughout the war, the Russian army has demonstrated an inability to create sufficient superiority on a given axis without redeploying personnel from other sectors of the front. For this reason, the likelihood of a summer offensive in Zaporizhzhia does not seem very high, according to ISW analysts.
However, the very preparation for a new offensive serves as a form of signalling. It is intended to convince both the American administration and the Ukrainian leadership that Moscow will not stop at what it has already achieved. The areas of northern Donbas not yet captured by Russian forces remain a central issue in negotiations that Russia and Ukraine are conducting with Donald Trump's administration. Although, as we have previously noted, this is by no means the only stumbling block in the negotiation process (the lack of clear promises from the US on security guarantees for Ukraine appears to be an equally important obstacle → Re:Russia: Three Tracks), the transfer of these areas to Russian control would represent not merely a territorial concession with which Ukraine is being asked to ‘pay’ for a cessation of hostilities, but the loss of a key asset in Ukraine’s strategy of attrition against a Russia that far exceeds it in overall potential.
To understand the strategic importance of the area not yet captured, it is essential to recognise that both Russia and Ukraine are fighting wars of attrition, but with different logics and objectives. Russia’s war of attrition is based on applying maximum pressure along Ukraine’s defensive line in the hope of breaking through due to acute manpower shortages on the other side. Ukraine’s logic of attrition follows the opposite formula: to hold defensive positions as long as possible while grinding down enemy manpower. In other words, the asymmetry of losses in offensive and defensive operations, where the attacking Russian side suffers far greater losses, is intended to compensate for the asymmetry in mobilisation resources, at least until Russia’s mobilisation capacity begins to diminish for one reason or another.
Some analysts doubt that Ukraine’s strategy can ultimately succeed, arguing that Russia’s mobilisation resources will not be exhausted for a long time. From this perspective, Ukraine would be better served by making concessions in order to achieve a ceasefire. Over the past two years, however, this strategy has largely worked. Russia has suffered enormous losses while making only minimal advances and has been unable to accumulate sufficient forces for a breakthrough. In particular, during the autumn offensive this year, the accumulated reserve once again proved insufficient for a tactical breakthrough. Observers note that a similar situation is now emerging ahead of the spring campaign.
According to data from the British Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (which closely correspond), Russian losses in terms of killed and wounded since mid-2024 have consistently amounted to around 35,000 people per month (see graph), or 420,000 per year. Exactly the same number of contract soldiers (422,000) were recruited by the Russian Ministry of Defence in 2025, according to Dmitry Medvedev. Similar estimates are given by Ukrainian intelligence and researcher Janis Kluge. Thus, the balance between recruitment and losses is effectively zero. This arithmetic underpins the relative success of Ukrainian resistance.
Monthly Russian military losses in the war with Ukraine, 2024–2025, thousand people
The price of northern Donbas
Ukrainian military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko argues that the battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, which stand in the path of Russian forces, could become a turning point in the entire war. Russia has concentrated its largest grouping here: almost 170,000 personnel for the seizure of the Pokrovsk–Myrnohrad agglomeration, a further 50,000 to 60,000 for operations in the Siversk sector, and more than 100,000 on the Lyman–Kupiansk axis. At the same time, the Kramatorsk agglomeration bridgehead, the so-called ‘fortress belt’ of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, is regarded by Kovalenko, as by many military experts, as the most heavily fortified territory in the country.
Accordingly, any attempt to capture it would therefore cost Russia particularly heavy losses. For this reason, the ‘fortress belt’ is a central asset in Ukraine’s strategy of attrition and, in Kovalenko’s view, has the potential to inflict critical damage on Russia’s mobilisation capacity. Conversely, by relinquishing this bridgehead without a fight, Ukraine would in effect allow Vladimir Putin to preserve approximately 400,000 to 600,000 servicemen, the likely losses over 12 to 18 months of assaults on the ‘fortress belt’, who could subsequently be used for further advances into Ukrainian territory. Taking such a step would be akin to returning to a killer the pistol he has dropped and which a potential victim has picked up, in the hope that this gesture of goodwill might reform him.
This view of the costs of a further Russian offensive in Donbas also has an economic dimension. Manpower, which the Kremlin does not spare in pursuit of territorial gains, has recently become one of the most expensive resources of the war. To maintain the required level of contract recruitment and keep the balance of Russian force numbers at zero, Moscow must not only pay generously for service, injuries and deaths, but also continually increase the size of one off bonus payments to new recruits. According to calculations by Re:Russia, since June 2025 the effective payment for signing a war contract has risen by almost half a million roubles to reach 2,430,000 (see the Appendix to this text for our methodology for calculating the effective contract and its rationale, as well as a table with data on the leading regions in terms of the size of the lump sum payment).
Overall, by these calculations, from mid 2023 to mid 2024 total Russian expenditure on manpower for the grouping fighting in Ukraine amounted to around 3 trillion roubles (→ Re:Russia: Three Trillion for The Living and The Dead). In the first half of 2025, its ‘price’ rose to 4 trillion per year (→ Re:Russia: From Living Force to Dead).
These calculations are based on a conservative estimate of the Russian grouping in Ukraine at 600,000 personnel, although the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, has cited a figure of 712,000. They also rely on the British Ministry of Defence estimate of 415,000 Russian killed and wounded in 2025.
As for Russian fatalities, analysts believe their share has risen sharply in recent periods. The Ukrainian foundation ‘Come Back Alive,’ which tracks Russian losses based on data from Ukrainian military units, estimates that the share of fatalities in Russian losses increased from around 30% in spring 2024 to 56% by the end of 2025. Two years ago, most losses were inflicted by artillery. Now they are increasingly caused by drones, which, unlike shell fragments, strike more precisely and more often with lethal consequences. Drones also complicate the evacuation of wounded personnel from the battlefield, while the infiltration tactics actively used by Russian forces since the summer often provide no possibility of evacuating wounded soldiers who have crossed into Ukrainian positions. The Mediazona and BBC project has documented 75,000 Russian fatalities over the course of 2024, though data for 2025 remain highly incomplete. The project’s coverage is estimated at 50% to 60% of actual losses. Total losses in 2025 are only slightly lower than in the previous year (according to the British Ministry of Defence), while the share of fatalities is higher. This implies an indicative range of 125,000 to 170,000 killed. A conservative working assumption of 30% fatalities, or around 130,000 per year, is retained here, on the assumption that Russian authorities may classify many missing personnel differently or delay compensation payments. It is also assumed that Russian authorities pay around 15 million roubles for each soldier killed. Estimated payments for injuries are calculated using a special formula, while the average monthly remuneration, including bonuses and supplements, is taken at 220,000 roubles (for more details, see → Re:Russia: From Living Force to Dead) .
As a result, based on current prices for the ‘living and the dead’ and their numbers, the annual cost to the Russian authorities of maintaining the personnel of the fighting grouping should amount to approximately 5.1 trillion roubles. Remarkably, this sum is equivalent to 90% of the federal budget deficit in 2025, estimated at 5.65 trillion roubles. If the calculation is made for a grouping of 700,000 personnel, the figure rises to around 5.4 trillion roubles, almost equal to the size of the budget deficit. According to our calculations, payments to contract soldiers from regional budgets should amount to 1 trillion roubles, equivalent to two thirds of the combined regional budget deficit of 1.5 trillion roubles.
Total expenditure on active offensive operations during the year
The largest share of expenditure falls on payments for those killed, 38%. Around one third is accounted for by regular pay, and 20% by regional payments for signing a contract. If hostilities were to be halted as a result of an agreement with Ukraine, the grouping would be unlikely to be disbanded. It would more probably form the basis of a new professional army. For this reason, it is estimated that a cessation of hostilities would free up around 4 trillion roubles within Russia’s consolidated budget and significantly ease the budgetary crisis facing the Kremlin amid falling oil prices.
Thus, if, with Donald Trump's support, Vladimir Putin were able to obtain northern Donbas without a fight, this would constitute a major success. He would remove a powerful military obstacle from the path of his army, preserve a large combat capable grouping for future operations, and release substantial financial resources that would help sustain regime stability in the face of a sharply deteriorating economic situation.
If the deal were to collapse, another year of fighting would undoubtedly prove a severe test for both sides. Acute manpower shortages on the Ukrainian side, desertion, and a damaged energy system generating a chain reaction of economic difficulties would continue to erode Ukraine’s front. Unlike the previous two years of relative comfort, however, the Russian side would now also find itself caught between shrinking economic resources on the one hand and mounting manpower losses in the face of the ‘fortress belt’ on the other.
Appendix
1. Methodology for calculating an effective contract
To assess Russian manpower expenditure during an offensive, it is necessary to calculate the average one off payment made upon signing a contract. The federal portion of this sum, set by presidential decree, remains fixed at 400,000 roubles. The regional portion, however, varies considerably across regions and changes over time, as regions periodically raise or lower the payment. A key factor is that a contract can be signed outside a person’s region of residence. Individuals may therefore travel to regions where payments are higher in order to sign a contract.
For this reason, the effective contract payment is calculated as an average across the 24 regions offering the highest payments in any given month. A group of wealthier regions appears consistently in this leading list. Other, less wealthy regions periodically raise payments, become temporarily attractive locations for signing contracts, and then, after fulfilling their contractual ‘quota’, reduce payments or leave them unchanged while others increase theirs, thereby dropping out of the leading group. This system allows the contractual burden to be spread across a large number of Russian regions.