Up to 407 Thousand Russians Signed Contracts with the Defense Ministry in 2024
By the end of the year, the pace of contract enlistment has fallen and continues to decline. A research by IStories
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In 2024, up to 407,200 people signed contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry. This follows from data on federal budget expenditures for 2024, which were analyzed by IStories.
407,200 people is the maximum estimate of those recruited into the army in 2024, while the minimum number of new recruits is 374,200. The range is due to the fact that in August 2024, Vladimir Putin increased the federal signing payment from 195,000 to 400,000 rubles. Because of this, it is difficult to calculate the exact number of contract soldiers for the third quarter of 2024.
This data suggests that the Defense Ministry is likely still overstating the number of new contract soldiers, though not as much as before. At the end of 2024, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov stated that 427,000 people had signed contracts for service — this is 5–15% higher than what the budget expenditure data shows. The estimate by Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev — 450,000 contract soldiers — diverges even more from budget spending.
By the end of 2024, the pace of recruiting new soldiers into the Russian army became lower than in 2023. According to budget expenditure data, in the fourth quarter of 2024, an average of 1,700 people signed contracts per day. This is 1.3 times less than in the same period last year. This number of people is not enough to reach the figure announced by Belousov, as previously assumed by IStories.
Will Russians go to war in 2025?
By the summer of 2025, the number of those who signed contracts to participate in the war in Ukraine doubled compared to the previous year, according to a statement by Vladimir Putin. The data on federal budget expenditures for 2025 have not yet been published, but it is possible to assess the real pace of recruitment using information about one-time payments to new contract soldiers from regional budgets (more details in the section “Explaining our calculations”).
These figures show that in spring 2025, the recruitment pace, on the contrary, decreased. IStories studied data from three regions in different parts of the country — they differ in population size and the amount of payments to new contract soldiers (from the minimum to one of the largest), and these payments have not changed in the last nine months. A similar trend of declining recruitment is seen in other regions for which data is available.
To estimate the number of new contract soldiers in Russia for 2024, we used data on federal budget expenditures by the relevant articles. This is the only way to independently assess the figures announced by the Russian authorities. This data allows us to calculate the number of payments made to new Russian contract soldiers per quarter. In August 2024, Vladimir Putin raised the federal signing payment from 195,000 to 400,000 rubles, so to calculate the number recruited in the third quarter of 2024, we use the average payment amount.
Data on regional spending on one-time payments for new contract soldiers is published daily. To estimate the number of new recruits in the regions by summer 2025, we divided the total amount of expenditures by the established regional payments amount. For correct comparison of data for previous months and for May, which is not yet over, we calculated the average number of contract soldiers per day. For the calculation, we used the number of calendar days in the month; an alternative method counting only working days (to exclude possible anomalies due to January or May holidays) shows the same trend.
To assess the recruitment dynamics across Russia as a whole, we use the estimate of Dr Janis Kluge, a research fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He analyzed data from 37 Russian regions, home to 42% of the population, and extrapolated the data to the entire country.
In the analysis, both Dr Kluge and IStories used only those regions where it is possible to clearly identify expenditures on one-time payments to contract soldiers. In other federal subjects, these expenses may be hidden in other budget lines, so we did not include them in our calculations.
Data on budget expenditures may reflect the situation with some delay — time may pass between signing the contract and the actual payment of money from the budget. We believe this delay usually does not exceed 30 days. For example, after the payment amount was increased in a region, budget expenditures for the relevant article increased proportionally about a month later.
In Kemerovo Oblast — a large Siberian region with a population of over 2.5 million — the payment upon signing a contract is 800,000 rubles. Data on regional spending for these payments show that in none of the months of 2025 did the pace of recruitment exceed the levels of late 2024. If in November–December, an average of 30 people per day were signing contracts, by May of this year it was already half as many, about 15 people per day.
The pace of contract recruitment in one of the North Caucasus regions — Kabardino-Balkaria — fell by half in May compared to the end of 2025: from 9 new recruits daily to 6 people per day. The republic’s authorities provide one of the largest one-time payments in the country to new contract soldiers — 1.5 million rubles (for comparison, the maximum payment in Russia now is 2.65 million rubles in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug).
Central Russia is no exception to the nationwide trend. In Oryol Oblast, where more than 600,000 people live, fewer contract soldiers were recruited in spring 2025 than in the second half of the previous year. In August 2024, local authorities increased the regional payment to the minimum amount recommended at the time by Vladimir Putin for the regions — 400,000 rubles — and have not revised the amount since then.
How many contract soldiers are being recruited across Russia?
The figure announced by Putin — 1,800 new contract soldiers per day by summer 2025 — may be almost twice as high as the real number. Dr Janis Kluge, a research fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), who studies the assessment of recruitment rates in the Russian army based on one-time payment data, updated his calculations at the request of IStories as of May. According to his estimate, on average, about 1,000 people are now signing contracts for military service across Russia. This estimate is based on expenditure data from 37 regions (more details in the section “Explaining our calculations”).
Dr Kluge’s analysis does not show a twofold acceleration in recruitment in May, as Vladimir Putin claims: “In December 2024, there was a spike in payments — probably seasonal: usually a lot of money is spent at the end of the year. In January [2025], on the contrary, there is a seasonal decline due to the holidays. In spring, the pace increased, but at the end of April and beginning of May, it began to fall,” he says.
In his view, the growth in the first months of 2025 is due to the fact that, amid discussions of peace negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, many signed contracts in the hope of avoiding participation in serious combat and still receiving payments. However, such motivation cannot last long, Dr Kluge notes, and after a period of excitement, a predictable drop followed.
Military experts from the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) consider Vladimir Putin’s statement about 50,000–60,000 new contract soldiers per month “purely political”: “It’s even clear from the context: first he says that in Ukraine ‘they’re now rounding up 30,000,’ and here ‘they’re coming voluntarily,’ twice as many. He just needs to show [Ukraine]: we have more people, don’t resist, we’ll crush you with numbers anyway. In reality, we don’t see such recruitment levels.”
In their opinion, such growth cannot occur without a massive increase in one-time signing payments — all previous spikes in recruitment rates have been accompanied by this: for example, in August 2024, when Putin raised the federal payment and recommended that regions also pay new contract soldiers at least 400,000 rubles, or during the payment race before New Year’s. In spring 2025, there was no such wave of increases.
“We can assume that the regions did not increase payments in May, although by the dynamics they needed to, because the negotiations themselves confused them. They did not know whether these peace agreements would actually happen or not,” say CIT experts. “And since payments are a serious burden on regional budgets, they themselves are reluctant to increase these payments. Therefore, they could have put the increases on pause, and when they realized that the negotiations so far had led nowhere and they would still be required to meet the contract recruitment plan, they began to raise them again.”
Moreover, Putin’s estimate contradicts the data announced on May 28 by Dmitry Medvedev, CIT analysts note. According to Medvedev, in the first five months of 2025, 189,000 new recruits joined the army. If this is true, then on average about 37,000 people sign contracts per month, not 50,000–60,000 as Putin claimed. However, even these numbers, according to analysts, do not reflect the real situation. Previously, IStories reported that official authorities may overstate recruitment data for contract soldiers by one and a half times — this is indicated by data on federal budget expenditures for one-time payments to servicemen.
Another sign that the recruitment pace for contract soldiers did not increase in 2025 is the absence of new units and formations in the Russian army, CIT analysts say: “For example, in 2023, Russia formed the 25th Combined Arms Army from scratch. In 2024, they formed the 44th Army Corps. Now they are expanding brigades into divisions, which also requires people, but not on such a scale. This indirectly shows that a significant increase in new contract soldiers is not yet being observed.”