Russian regions are massively boosting military sign-up bonuses to lure more people to fight in Ukraine

By Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova, CNN

(CNN) — Russian regions are dramatically increasing the amount of money they pay to new military recruits as analysts say “ideological” recruitment campaigns are no longer enough to motivate people to fight in Ukraine.

Several regions announced in recent days they would as much as quadruple the sign-up bonuses in a bid to boost their recruitment numbers.

Russia has been suffering enormous casualties in its war on Ukraine, with an estimated 1 million Russian soldiers killed or injured since the start of the full-scale invasion three and half years ago.

Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov made recruitment one of the military’s top priorities during a high-level defense meeting in August, stressing that manpower was “key for supporting offensive operations.”

But while Belousov claimed recruitment targets were being met, the independent Russian investigative outlet IStories reported otherwise.

It said that, based on official budget expenditure data, some 37,900 people signed contracts with the defense ministry in the second quarter of 2025 – two-and-a-half times fewer than a year ago.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based conflict monitor, said that Russian force generation efforts were “increasingly resembling complex business models rather than an ideologically driven recruitment campaign.”

In an analyst note in September, the ISW said Russian authorities and informal recruiters “continue to employ financial incentives, deception, and coercion” to bolster recruitment.

Four times the annual salary

The government of the Tyumen region in Siberia said on Monday that it would pay new recruits a lump sum of 3 million rubles ($36,560), on top of the 400,000 rubles they get from the federal government – as long as the recruits sign up before the end of November.

The new regional payment is a significant bump up from the 1.9 million rubles recruits in Tyumen received until now and the equivalent of three full years’ worth of the average salary there, according to Rosstat, the Russian Federal Statistics Service.

Similarly, the governor of the Voronezh region in southwestern Russia announced on Telegram last week that the sign-up payment from the region would quadruple to 2.1 million rubles.

The local Voronezh government said that, to receive the payment, recruits don’t need to be from the region, as long as it’s where they sign the documents.

The Tambov, Krasnodar, Kurgan and Altai regions, and the republic of Tatarstan, also announced significant increases in the payments, which come on top of the monthly salary for contract soldiers fighting in Ukraine. That starts at roughly 210,000 rubles ($2,600), more than double the average Russian wage.

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CNN’s Victoria Butenko contributed reporting.