The Contract System Has Broken Down: The decline in the influx of contract soldiers for the war in Ukraine reflects a systemic failure of the commercial recruitment model

A growing body of evidence and indirect estimates suggests that the inflow of contract soldiers for the war in Ukraine fell by 20–25% in late 2025 and early 2026. Beyond the calculations themselves, this is indicated by the expansion of campaigns aimed at coercing vulnerable groups into signing contracts, as well as pressure on the police, regional administrations, universities and businesses to deliver new recruits.

The commercial contract model through which the Kremlin managed, for almost three years, to replenish losses and secure manpower for the front now appears to be entering a crisis. This is not simply a slowdown in recruitment rates, but a systemic failure of the model itself, one that will likely prove extremely difficult to overcome.

Although the rate of growth in the nominal value of military contracts remains high, rising by an estimated 40% over the past year, the decline in the flow of applicants has been driven by changes in other aspects of the ‘deal’. In particular, the scale of Russian military losses increased substantially from the end of 2024 onwards, and throughout 2025 potential recruits accumulated sufficient information about these losses.

Furthermore, perceptions regarding the duration of contracts have also changed. In 2024, many recruits believed they were signing up for a year, while in 2025 many assumed the war would soon end in a peace settlement. Both illusions have now disappeared, and the perception of contracts as effectively indefinite has further reduced their value in the eyes of potential recruits.

Finally, despite sustained propaganda efforts, public perceptions of both the war itself and its participants have deteriorated significantly. High payments combined with the absence of effective vertical control have fostered systems of corruption and internal violence within the armed forces that are widely perceived as deeply unjust and that undermine the perceived benefits of signing a contract. Reports of extortion, punishment pits, ‘meat grinder assaults’ and extrajudicial killings have entered the public domain. At the same time, Russian society has developed an increasingly ambivalent attitude towards participants in the war: they tend to provoke caution and hostility rather than admiration, people avoid them socially, and employers seek not to hire them. All of this substantially erodes the value of the already extraordinarily high nominal contract payments.

Recruitment shortfall: estimates and indicators

The commercial contract model through which the Kremlin has, for roughly three years, addressed the problem of replacing losses and attracting manpower for the front appears to be in crisis. In our assessment, this is not merely a decline in recruitment rates, but a systemic breakdown of the model that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.

There are increasing indications that the intensity of conscript recruitment for the war with Ukraine has declined, although there is no fully verified data on this. According to an assessment by Robert ‘Madyar’ Brovdi, head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Unmanned Systems Forces (USF), Russian military losses have exceeded monthly recruitment levels since December 2025. According to his figures, between December 2025 and April 2026 Russia recruited 148,000 personnel for service in the ‘special military operation’, or approximately 29,700 per month, while confirmed losses from drone strikes alone amounted to 157,000 over the same period. If accurate, these figures suggest that recruitment has fallen by roughly 18% compared to last year. According to Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, 422,000 people signed contracts with the Ministry of Defence last year, i.e. approximately 35,000 per month.

Medvedev also stated on 27 March this year that the number of new contract soldiers since the start of January had exceeded 80,000. This figure likewise indicates that monthly recruitment in 2026 is falling short of 30,000. Calculations by Janis Kluge, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), based on projections derived from analyses of signing bonus payments across 40 Russian regions, lead to the same conclusions: recruitment rates in the first quarter of 2026 were approximately 20% lower than in the first quarter of last year. Meanwhile, the publication Verstka, citing interviews with recruitment office personnel and data from the Moscow mayor’s office, claims that the decline in the number of people willing to sign contracts, estimated at around 25%, had already begun in late 2025. The quality of recruits has reportedly deteriorated sharply as well.

Beyond these figures and estimates, the growing severity of the recruitment problem is reflected in the widening campaign to coerce vulnerable social groups into signing contracts, as well as mounting pressure on police forces, regional administrations, universities and businesses to provide recruits. Anton Gorbatsevich, coordinator of ‘Idite Lesom’, an organisation supporting Russian deserters, notes that the number of complaints concerning coercion within the penitentiary system has declined substantially because the military has already exhausted most prisoners available for recruitment. The prison population in Russian penal colonies and detention centres has fallen by almost 40% during the war, as admitted by FSIN Director Arkady Gostev. At the same time, the number of complaints from individuals under investigation has increased.

According to reports by Verstka, police officers receive bonuses ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 roubles for each detainee they persuade or coerce into signing a contract. Reports from Russian regions indicate that police conduct raids targeting men suspected of drug use and pressure them into signing military contracts under the threat of criminal prosecution. According to Verstka’s data, approximately 12% of detainees signed military contracts before their cases reached court in 2025.

Other groups vulnerable to pressure include conscripts and university students. Whereas a year ago appeals from conscripts concerning coercion into signing military contracts accounted for 10–15% of all requests received by ‘Idite Lesom’, they now account for around 40%. Universities have tightened their entrance exam requirements, deadlines for resitting failed courses and expulsion rules in order to encourage students to enlist in the army. According to the Telegram channel Faridaily, in early 2026, Valery Falkov, Minister of Science and Higher Education, instructed rectors of Russian universities to ensure that at least 2% of students signed military contracts with the Ministry of Defence.

Moscow demands recruitment quotas from regional administrations, which in turn exert pressure on local businesses. Numerous leaks regarding such pressure have emerged in recent months. An entire business ecosystem has developed around this ‘recruitment vertical’ at the regional level. According to calculations by Important Stories based on analyses of regional budget execution reports, regional budget expenditure on payments to recruiters for attracting contract soldiers has more than doubled compared with the previous year, rising from 358 million to 802 million roubles per month. Over the entire period of contract recruitment, Russian regions have spent at least 7.7 billion roubles on payments to recruiters.

The mechanism and cost of an effective contract

The effectiveness of the military contract system relied on exceptionally high bonuses and payments. The annual income of a new contract soldier today is estimated at approximately 5.5 million roubles, or more than $60,000, which is five and a half times higher than Russia’s median annual wage or per capita income in 2025. In the poorer half of Russia’s regions, namely the low-income periphery from which most contract soldiers are recruited, the gap reaches a factor of ten. Additional exemptions and benefits, together with compensation payments for injury and death (15–17 million roubles at the start of 2026) combined with the initial signing bonus, create a support mechanism capable of lifting a family out of chronic poverty and into a higher income bracket, enabling children to attend university and resolving problems such as housing that would previously have been far beyond the family’s means.

For two and a half years, the balance between supply and demand was maintained through the expansion of benefits and increases in signing bonuses. At the same time, the likely decline in recruitment at the end of last year and the beginning of this year has occurred against the backdrop of continuing growth in regional bonuses. Because military contracts can be signed in any region, rather than solely at one’s place of residence, we use the average bonus across the 24 leading regions as an indicator of the dynamics of the effective contract (for more details on this methodology → Re:Russia: The Crisis of Effective Contracts). The range of 24 regions appears appropriate: on the one hand, those who sign contracts deliberately travel to regions offering the highest payments; on the other hand, individuals exhibiting deviant behaviour and those signing under pressure tend not to secure the most advantageous ‘deals’. By contrast, calculating an average across all regions would be methodologically misleading, as it would fail to reflect the true dynamics of the contract’s market attractiveness.

Our calculations of the price of an effective contract indicate that over the past year it has risen relatively steadily by 10–13% every three months. Between June 2025 and mid-May 2026, it rose by just over 40%, from 1.95 million to 2.74 million roubles. Although these growth rates appear somewhat lower than during the previous year, when increases amounted to roughly 50–60% (→ Re: Russia: From the living to the dead), they by no means suggest that the authorities have begun economising on military contracts.

Dynamics of the average regional payments for contract signing across the 24 leading regions, 2025–2026, in millions of roubles

At the same time, the size of signing bonuses, as well as compensation payments for injury and death, were originally calibrated on the basis of commercial life insurance practices and are therefore, somewhat paradoxically, rational to a certain extent. The sums paid are intended to reconcile the average Russian and their family with the counterparty, namely the state: the injury or death of a relative remains a personal tragedy, but it loses the character of social injustice both in the eyes of those directly involved in the contractual relationship and in the perception of wider society, thereby preventing it from becoming a source of broader social outrage (→ Re:Russia: Grave Loyalty).

How the terms of the ‘deal’ have changed: risk assessment, distrust of the employer, social deprivation

However, if the military contract is viewed as a relatively rational transaction, it is necessary to take account of changes in another key parameter, namely the perceived probability of injury or death. According to well-reasoned calculations by Meduza, the scale of Russian casualties rose at the end of 2024 and stabilised at a new level in 2025. In data from the British Ministry of Defence, the picture is similar: by the end of 2024 Russian losses had risen to more than 1,000 personnel killed and wounded per day. As a result, the probability of surviving military service unscathed declined sharply, while by the end of 2025 potential recruits had accumulated sufficient evidence regarding the fate of those who had signed contracts a year earlier.

Furthermore, assessments of the likelihood of a favourable outcome deteriorated because perceptions of the duration of service also changed. In 2024 many recruits were misled by the nominal one-year term of contracts, despite the fact that in practice service became indefinite. In 2025 expectations concerning the duration of service were shaped by hopes that the war would soon end through a ‘peace process’ coordinated by Donald Trump. Many viewed signing a contract as a final opportunity to earn money before an imminent peace settlement. By the beginning of 2026 these expectations had weakened, and prospects for ending the war appeared entirely uncertain.

Finally, over the past year perceptions of both the conditions of contract service and its social status have changed. Gorbatsevich believes that the decline in interest in the contract is linked both to the high rate of casualties at the front and to the widespread circulation of information about the system of corruption and extortion that has developed in the combat zone, including the torture and murder of servicemen by their own commanders. These practices substantially reduce the money that contract soldiers actually retain and are widely perceived as lawlessness. Information about punishment pits, extortion, ‘meat grinder assaults’ and extrajudicial killings has become accessible to most interested observers.

Russian military bloggers regularly complain about declining interest in contract service. The author of the Telegram channel ‘Kartavykh Alexander’ (150,000 subscribers) conducted a survey among readers at the end of 2025 regarding their willingness to sign a contract and the reasons for their reluctance to do so. Around 20% of the 5,000 people surveyed expressed a willingness to enlist, according to Kartavikh’s calculations. More than a quarter of responses cited distrust in payments, the state and conditions of service as reasons for refusing to sign contracts. Analysing the comments, the author concluded that the main reason for recruitment difficulties was ‘not civilian greed, but the employer’s weak reputation: the feeling that you will be deceived, sent into an assault and never released’. Even respondents expressing willingness to go to the front referred to problems with training, equipment and uncertainty regarding the duration of contracts.

Furthermore, participation in the war no longer translates into an improved social status, sociologists note (→ Re:Russia: Three and a Half Periods of Russian Life in Wartime). The period during which peripheral social groups experienced rising living standards, with the most vulnerable sections of Russian society benefiting from higher consumption and real incomes, proved short-lived and lasted only until mid-2024. From autumn 2024 onwards, low-income Russians once again began reporting deterioration in their material circumstances, while the correlation between the number of war dead in a region and the volume of mortgage lending turned negative. Evidence of income redistribution in favour of poorer and more deprived groups has largely disappeared.

Finally, despite the forced glorification of war veterans in official discourse, in reality public attitudes towards them tend to be characterised more by caution and hostility (→ Re:Russia: Heroes, Mercenaries, Victims). In the eyes of those around them, they are a source of danger. Around 40% of those surveyed by the Levada Centre expect an increase in conflict following the return of war veterans, and just as many believe that the war has scarred their souls. ‘We will suffer with them for years to come’, noted the centre’s director, Denis Volkov, quoting comments from focus group participants in an article for Urbi et orbi. Respondents assume that most war participants suffer from PTSD and associate this trauma with a heightened likelihood of criminal behaviour, effectively stigmatising them, Volkov argues. At the same time, employers deliberately avoid hiring ‘veterans’ because of the additional costs and the legal and political risks involved. Firing a war participant is considered practically impossible, while any conflict with them may prove dangerous for the employer. According to an investigation by the publication ‘Vot Tak’, the problem of employment among former combatants is systemic and widespread.

Thus, the system of the effective commercial ‘war’ contract, which functioned over the past two and a half to three years, is now breaking down along three distinct lines:

— high casualty rates and the indefinite nature of contracts, combined with the uncertain prospects for ending the war, leave potential recruits with very limited chances of returning home relatively unharmed; the level of risk is perceived as significantly higher than it was throughout 2024 and most of 2025;

— the Russian authorities and military command have failed to maintain even a relative degree of order within the armed forces, while high payments to contract soldiers have encouraged the emergence of systems of internal violence and corruption that are perceived as profoundly unjust and that undermine the perceived benefits of military contracts;

— ‘returning’ from the war has itself become an additional problem, not only in terms of social reintegration, but also because of the highly ambivalent attitude towards veterans within wider society.

To summarise, as perceptions of risk and the probability of surviving to the end of a contract have deteriorated, the social image of the war has simultaneously worsened both in the eyes of society at large and among potential recruits themselves. At the same time, the entrenched system of military corruption and lawlessness within the armed forces has, to a considerable extent, eroded the perceived value of the rising nominal price of the effective contract in the eyes of potential recruits.