Been a cluster of radically reduced payments for signup, delays in soldier pay, and now a drastic reduction in death benefits just in the last few weeks.
Seems like boring economic news at one level - but this is very VERY important to the essential calculus of this war. A war, remember, that from the russian side is being fought - officially - by volunteers and mercenaires. They are financially driven by definition - Not ideologically or as conscripts who have no choice.
Millions of russians and have opted in because of the life-changing money they earn on signup and upon death. If those incentives are going away, it’s a massive signal that:
- Russia is no longer willing or able to spend it’s way out of this war
- There has been a change in strategic urgency to maintain their current recruitment pace
- Ukraine’s attacks against oil & gas facilities and the russian economy has been succesful
These are loud and clear signals that they are ramping things down - whether Mordor wants to or not. And that the political regions Russia counts on to provide low-value grunts are not receiving sufficient economic support from Moscow.
I mean - take a step back. This will absolutely reduce recruitment to near zero in these regions. At a time where daily casualty rates are regularly breaking 2,000 per day as the Russian army flounders with their tactics of ‘mush forward, sit in a hole and wait to die’.
Russia isn’t going to TELL you when they’re collapsing. But the signs are adding up. Think about the sequence of decisions that lead to local admins curtailing death benefits - the ESSENTIAL purpose for signing up for a failing invasion. Guys that no longer have an incentive to sigup today means there are less bodies to fill the line 3 months from now. Maybe less. Trump had his balls cut off. The lines aren’t moving at all. Russia is at least going through the theatrics of formal peace talks, even if their starting positions are completely absurd. Since they only understand power and pain, they would only be asking for peace, even in their obtuse masochistic way, if they have no other options.
We’re very likely in the endgame here.
I had 3 hours of electricity today. Tomorrow might be even worse. So it all might be just shifting the “strategy” from infantry sturms to destroying those leftovers of electrical infrastructure we still have.
very sorry to hear that, and wish you strength to endure. It’s important even when talking about the macro of things to acknowledge the misery of the current expeirence Russia is committing against you.
They’ll just keep taking men off the street and forcing them into the meat grinder
In a war, you’d rather be the grinder than the meat.
It’s all a tragedy, and Ukraine is suffering of course - but if this is how Russia is forced to continue this industrial murder project, then they are going to lose badly. Now, and later.
- Severely reduced payments for signup, like a tenth what it was before.
- Pushing payments 1 month because of budget deficit.
- Cutting payments to families of fallen soldiers.
It’s all around that there are problems paying.
Bashkortostan has repeatedly reduced the payment to families of soldiers killed in the war, bringing the amount to just 100,000 rubles ($1,220) at the end of April from 2 million rubles as recently as September 2025.
Bashkortostan may not be rich, but the story about reduced payments was about Saint Petersburg, and that is one of the richer regions.
The Youtube channel inside russia talked about this more than half a year ago. The central government is bleeding the regions, and the regions are paying the main share of the cost of hiring soldiers. But they can’t afford it.Russia isn’t going to TELL you when they’re collapsing. But the signs are adding up.
Exactly, the Russian economy is already collapsing, and things are getting as bad as they were when the Soviet Union collapsed. All the same economic symptoms, and this time Russia is in an expensive war.
Guys that no longer have an incentive to sigup today means there are less bodies to fill the line 3 months from now.
Unfortunately I don’t think so, Putin is using his increased powers for mobilization now, People are forced into the military now, and they do NOT get any signup bonus.
We’re very likely in the endgame here.
I hope so, but Russia has been surprisingly resilient, we thought they could only go on for about 3 years economically, and when the war chest was empty, they’d soon be forced to stop. Yet here we are in the fifth year, and Putin is still trying to increase pressure on Ukraine, despite his country is collapsing.
If that’s correct, then the quality and motivation of a guy literally kidnapped and pressed into service doesn’t sound like it would be very high. That’s not a winning strategy, and if Russia is forced to resort to such despearte, barrel scraping measures for recruits, then Ukraine is going to win this war.
Absolutely, probably mostly like those prisoners they sent to the front, that were shot by their superiors if they tried to run back.
Most likely this will do little to nothing to actually help Russia winning. I could even imagine it will hurt morale among the professionals and make it worse.
Seeing your comrades killed can’t be good for morale I would think.You would think. But I’ve seen enough videos of russians wading forwrad through their comrades’ guts to question if I really understand their psyche.
I mean - I have trouble grasping how they don’t put 1+1 together, look at the guys who went out yesterday and never came back, then get told “right - we’re going to <objective alpha>, let’s go” - and not say ‘hold on a minute’.
Worse - there’s tons of footage of them literally marching through completely obliterated corpse fields of their fellow soldiers, and still pushing on. I understand coercion and can grasp having a very fatalist attitude to life in general if you accept that Russian life is a grey, grinding, living hell at the best of times. But how do you just waltz through open graveyards of deconstructed human pulp and think “this is okay, I know what I’M doing, I wont end up like these guys”.
Then the last confused seconds of their lives, they hear a buzzing noise, turn to face it, then they make a stupid, terrorized face and feel a hot pressure wave for a millsecond as the drones assplode them into canned pasta.
How do they get them to leave the camp? Why do they keep moving forward into certain death? Are they literally that fucking stupid? You understand the institutional cruelty, the barrier troops, the brutal punishments for refusing orders. But - I mean - gruseome death seems certain when you leave that trench. I mean - the reality may be that they go off marching often all over the front, and we only see the aggregated videos of successful drone strikes. It’s surprising that there aren’t more reports of fragging and fratricide. Or maybe there are, and the overall shit performance of their assault forces is a reflection of their lack of motivation.
I’ve also seen accounts from captured soldiers that they often don’t even realize that they’re on an assault. Their commanders lie to them and say “go to point x, there will be supplies and comrades waiting there, then await further instructions”. But in reality, they’re being sent to unsecure locations, often to try and expose Ukrainian firing positions and be bullet sponges that the Russians can then try to target with artillery, drones and higher quality assault forces. That deception would explain why you sometimes see low quality, poorly equipped troops just mushing across open fields in very undisciplined looking formation as they’re attacked by drones.
I don’t know dude. This war is a vulgar, disgusting thing at every level. While I’m eager for it to end, I’m also callously thankful that Russia is so stupid and arrogant that they continue to destroy themselves hopelessly. Every dead vatnik today is a loss to the russian state’s ability to invade again in the future.
I don’t understand it either, maybe for some a sentiment that they are practically dead already, so they might as well get it over with, but also sometimes under threat of being shot from behind if they don’t go forward. That part has been well documented.
given those options, wouldn’t you rather go into Ukrainian custody? Join the russian free legions? I dunno. As much as I’d like to say that the average soldier isn’t a dangerous animal that needs to be eliminated - there is LOTS of video evidence of Russians fighting pretty damn hard, long after you’d expect them to surrender. Whatever their reasons, there is still a lot of them that fight to the death.
The russian mind is not singular, and even if it were, it’s bloody hard to understand. They don’t value anyone’s life, including their own, like other cultures do.
given those options, wouldn’t you rather go into Ukrainian custody?
Absolutely, but the Russian soldiers are massively indoctrinated about how Ukraine Starve and torture their prisoners, exactly to prevent that. So the average Russian soldier is fighting something they consider worse than death. We also see Russian soldiers commit suicide rather than surrender!
there is still a lot of them that fight to the death.
Because they believe the alternative is worse.
