Despite the Kremlin’s insistence that its war machine remains robust, recruitment figures into the Russian army tell a different story. Moscow is planning to lock in 409,000 new contracts this year – roughly 1,100 recruits a day. However, according to the government initiative Хочу Жить – ‘I want to live’ – which helps Russian servicemen voluntarily surrender to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, between January and March the average number of contracts signed was approximately 940 per day. It appears that even in Russia’s poorest Eastern regions where military service has long functioned as a form of economic survival, increasingly lavish signing bonuses are no longer enough.

This matters because Russia’s losses are staggering. According to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in March alone, more than 35,000 troops were killed or wounded. And while the overall size of Russian forces in Ukraine has continued to grow (as of February, the Ukrainian military believes it to stand at approximately 712,000 personnel, including the operational reserve), this has been sustained only by draining strategic reserves – not by a healthy flow of new volunteers. Russia’s reliance on attritional ‘meat grinder’ tactics is starting to take its toll.

The strain is showing elsewhere. Regional governments, facing a combined budget deficit running into billions, have begun cutting enlistment and compensation payments. Cash bonuses paid upon signing a contract, as well as the amounts paid to families of the deceased, vary by region. For example, in the Kemerovo region, payments to family members of servicemen who die during Vladimir Putin’s so-called ‘special military operation’ were reduced from 3 million........

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