In the second quarter of 2025, 37.9 thousand people received payments for signing a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense, which is 2.5 times less compared to the same period in 2024. This is reported by 'Glavkom' citing Russian media.
«Given the recruitment data for the first quarter, only in six months of 2025, 127.5 thousand people received payments for signing a contract. In the same period of 2024, one-time bonuses were received by 166.2 thousand people», – journalists note.
The number of recruits in the Russian army fell to its lowest level in two years in the second quarter of this year. Only in the same period of 2023, the number of people signing contracts was lower. At that time, the Kremlin had just begun an active campaign to attract contract soldiers.
A research fellow at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, Yanis Kluge, stated that he does not see a decline and believes that in the first half of 2025, 191 thousand people could have signed contracts. His estimate is based on information about payments for signing contracts from the regional budgets of 37 regions, extrapolated to all of Russia.
Regions of the Russian Federation reported problems with recruitment of contract soldiers. For example, the authorities of the Irkutsk region cannot find people for the army due to a lack of funds, and in the Vladimir region, officials stopped reporting the number of recruits sent to the front.
In the second quarter of 2025, recruitment into the Russian army fell by half compared to the previous year. Problems with the recruitment of contract soldiers are increasing in various regions of the country due to insufficient financial support and other difficulties that complicate the process of attracting new military personnel.