Putin forced to send wounded back to fight and offer huge military salaries as Russia suffers a million casualties

Russian military casualties in the war in Ukraine are expected to reach a million before the end of June. This figure, which is composed of combat-related injuries as well as deaths, reveals that Moscow is prepared to see its soldiers to pay a staggeringly high price for Russia to maintain and expand its illegal occupation of Ukrainian territory.

The scale of losses since the full-scale invasion in 2022 is a direct result of Russia’s “meat grinder” approach to fighting, which relies on sending waves of troops into enemy fire, sacrificing many so that a few can get through. Vladimir Putin’s strategy has allowed Russian forces to make steady – but painfully slow – advances into eastern Ukraine, but at an estimated cost of 53 casualties per square kilometre seized.

Russia is now changing the way it is fighting in Ukraine because of the high casualty rates. It is now using small, dispersed detachments because of the loss of large numbers of junior officers. Although replacements are being recruited from the ranks and quickly put through an abbreviated training, these new officers have neither the training nor the experience to command larger formations of soldiers.

Large battlefield losses in Ukraine also put more pressure on military recruitment efforts back home in Russia. In the absence of a general mobilisation, which Putin has been reluctant to declare, the ministry of defence has had to use creative solutions to deal with the war’s insatiable demand for manpower.

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One response is to return wounded soldiers to combat duty before they have fully recovered. Some Russian soldiers have reportedly complained that they are being forced to return to the front before their medical treatments are finished. CNN reported that Ukrainian drone operators have released video footage appearing to show Russian soldiers on crutches in combat zones.

Military recruiters also visit Russia’s prisons with the offer of full pardons for those who survive a combat tour. Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service says Russia’s ministry of defence has recruited an estimated 180,000 soldiers using this method, which was introduced by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the summer of 2022.

Some of these former prisoners being recruited are reported to be women, although estimates of their numbers are hard to find. The active recruitment of women by the Russian military to serve in Ukraine appears to have been kept quiet because it contradicts the Kremlin’s message that military service and the war in Ukraine in particular are the business of men and provide opportunities for Russian men to demonstrate their masculinity.

Russia is now increasingly turning to its allies North Korea and China to provide it with the soldiers that it needs on the front lines. Earlier this year Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that at least 155 Chinese troops are fighting for Russia in Ukraine, while North Korea is believed to have suffered approximately 5,000 casualties among the soldiers that Pyongyang has sent to Russia.

But by far the most common solution to Russia’s chronic shortage of soldiers is for the state to keep increasing the salaries and benefits on offer to civilians who agree to sign a contract to serve in the military. Salaries of 200,000 rubles – more than US$2,000 (£1,481) – a month are typical, putting combat soldiers in the top 10% of Russia’s earners.

In addition to high salaries, the families of volunteer or “contract” soldiers are eligible for benefits such as low-interest mortgages as well as generous compensation payments if the soldier is killed or permanently disabled. In some regions, more than half the social welfare budgets are going to soldiers and their families.

Few men left

This influx of money has transformed the lives of people living in some of Russia’s most economically deprived regions. This increased prosperity has bolstered support for Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. But the departure – and, in many cases, permanent loss – of so many men has shifted the demographics of many small communities, which are now populated largely by women, young children and the elderly.

Those soldiers who return to villages and small towns with life-changing physical or emotional injuries will have their disability payments, but may struggle to get the medical support that they need from Russia’s strained health care system.

One category of Ukraine war veterans that have benefited most from their military service are the former prisoners who managed to survive their combat experiences. But one of the consequences of recruiting soldiers from the prisons is that when violent criminals return from the war with full pardons, many will commit new crimes. It is estimated that these former prisoners-turned-soldiers have so far been responsible for nearly 200 murders, sparking outrage among the victims’ families.

Although Russia has a large population, its human resources are not endless and have been under strain even before its mass invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, bringing enormous combat losses and seemingly endless demands for more and more soldiers. Russia was already experiencing a demographic crisis. The proportion of society of child-bearing age is low, reflecting a dip in the birth rate in the 1990s.

The COVID pandemic increased the mortality rate among Russia’s adult population, while hundreds of thousands of young men left Russia in 2022 to avoid military service.

A long-term legacy of this war will undoubtedly be a shrinking population, despite the state’s efforts to encourage women to have more babies. Even those Russian women who aspire to earn the newly reinstated “Mother Heroine” award by bearing and raising ten or more children may struggle to find men to father them.

But despite the many problems experienced by Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, those who survive their military service are being promised a golden future. In February 2024, Putin declared that the country’s war veterans will be the new elite.

Former soldiers are being offered a fast track into political office through the “Time of Heroes” programme, which provides training, work experience and access to valuable networks. So far only a small number of veterans have graduated to take up positions of power, but this suggests that the war in Ukraine will continue to shape Russia’s political decisions for years to come.

Jennifer Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.