- Sep 13, 2002
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The ‘Deathonomics’ Powering Russia’s War Machine
Payments for soldiers killed on the front lines are transforming local economies in some of Russia’s poorest regions
By Georgi Kantchev
Going to war is now a rational economic choice in Russia’s impoverished hinterlands.
Facing heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia is offering high salaries and bonuses to entice new recruits. In some of the country’s poorest regions, a military wage is as much as five times the average. The families of those who die on the front lines receive large compensation payments from the government.
These are life-changing sums for those left behind. Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev calculates that the family of a 35-year-old man who fights for a year and is then killed on the battlefield would receive around 14.5 million rubles, equivalent to $150,000, from his soldier’s salary and death compensation. That is more than he would have earned cumulatively working as a civilian until the age of 60 in some regions. Families are eligible for other bonuses and insurance payouts, too.
“Going to the front and being killed a year later is economically more profitable than a man’s further life,” Inozemtsev said, a phenomenon he calls “deathonomics.”
So many soldiers have now been killed that the payments—totaling as much as $30 billion in the past year as of June—are a telling symptom of how the war is transforming Russian society and the economy at large. Since the start of the invasion, the Kremlin has boosted military spending to post-Soviet highs, offsetting some of the impact of Western sanctions. Weapons factories work around the clock, providing employment and high wages.
Now the mounting death payments are providing an injection of wealth into some of Russia’s poorest areas in return for a steady stream of soldiers for the war effort. Poverty levels are now at their lowest since data collection began in 1995, according to official statistics. Perceptions of what it means to join the military have been transformed.
Army service after the Soviet collapse was viewed for years by many Russians as a career for talentless men unable to fill skilled positions. With no major wars to fight during much of that period, most sat at military bases filing paperwork or doing menial jobs.
But the war in Ukraine has transformed the fortunes of those willing to fight, boosting not just their income but their social status, too. The government has launched a new program, called “Time of Heroes,” aimed at training up service members for government positions.
Schools across Russia host lectures by soldiers fresh from the front lines. Desks are kept empty to honor a local “hero” who never returned from the front, with biographical details inscribed onto it and even objects from the life of the fallen soldier.
President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has touted a “new elite” of service members who enjoy myriad perks and a fast track into politics. The incentives have helped tame social tensions fueled by income inequality, in a way that presidential decrees and income-redistribution plans couldn’t. Surveys by the independent Levada Center show a marked increase since the prewar period in the percentage of Russians who think the country is heading in the right direction.
For the Kremlin, generous payments help avoid a general mobilization of fighting-age men after a previous round in 2022 rattled the country and led many young men to flee.
“This is money that most people in these backward areas have never seen in their lifetime, so it’s little wonder that many of them accept,” said Vasily Astrov, economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. “And for the Kremlin, offering good pay for soldiers is the only way to maintain their war effort with high levels of domestic support.”
There is little effort to conceal the grim calculus at work.
Putin has publicly promoted the notion that dying on the front is more worthwhile than living a dire existence in Russia’s hardscrabble towns.
“Losing a loved one is a great tragedy, an unfillable void,” Putin said in a November 2022 meeting with Russian women who had lost sons in the war.
“But some people barely live, and when they die, from vodka or something else, it’s unclear how,” he said to one of the mothers. “Your son lived, you understand? He accomplished his goal.”
And some Russian officials actively promote the idea of economic gain from death in war.
“A child should understand: Yes, your father carried out a heroic act, and died, but thanks to his heroic act I have an apartment,” the governor of a region in Russia’s Far East said at a meeting to promote support for children affected by the war. “That makes children more patriotic.”
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Since the start of the war, Russia has suffered over 600,000 casualties, including killed and wounded, according to Western estimates. To offset these losses and incentivize recruitment, the government pays soldiers fighting in Ukraine a minimum monthly salary of 210,000 rubles, equivalent to $2,140, substantially higher than the national average of 75,000 rubles.
Further bonuses are awarded for taking part in offensive military operations and for battlefield feats. Regional governments also give additional payouts. The families of soldiers killed in action can receive over $150,000 in federal, regional and insurance compensation.
