Russia needs bodies to fight in its ongoing war against Ukraine, and the bonuses the government offers to entice new recruits are changing economic levels in some of the poorest regions of the country, particularly when these soldiers are killed in action.
"Going to the front and being killed a year later is economically more profitable than a man's further life," according to Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, who coined the term "deathonomics" to describe what's been happening, reported The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Inozemtsev explains that the family of a 35-year-old man who goes off to fight for about a year before being killed would get around 14.5 million rubles, a fortune in many parts of Russia. This total comes to about $150,000 U.S. dollars, representing the soldier's salary and death benefit bonus.
In Russia, that amount is more than the man would have made working each year until he reached the age of 60.
Soldiers' families also are eligible for bonuses and insurance payouts.
And with the deaths continuing to climb as the bloody war rages on, Russia has paid out as much as $30 billion in death benefit payments.
Russia has incurred more than 600,000 casualties, in terms of people being killed or wounded in its war with Ukraine, Western estimates show.
The Ukrainian government pays soldiers a minimum monthly salary of 210,000 rubles, or $2,140 USD. The national average salary is 75,000 rubles, or $761 USD a month.
Weapons factories are also running around the clock, allowing Russians to earn high wages.
With the death payments growing, some of the poorest parts of Russia are seeing poverty levels at their lowest point since 1995.
Those numbers are also changing how Russians think about the people who join the military.
For many years, Russians saw a career in the military as only suited for men who could not fill skilled positions, and as there were no major wars occurring, many recruits did menial jobs at military bases.
But the war has elevated the reputations of soldiers — not only because of the money they earn dead or alive but because of programs to boost the military's reputation — and as a result, many are considered national heroes.
In addition, President Vladimir Putin is touting programs that bring service members into politics and praising those who are killed as heroes who benefit their families more by being dead in the war than remaining alive and in their villages.
The exchange works out for the Kremlin, which saw many young men fleeing the country after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
"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," Vasily Astrov, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, commented. "For the Kremlin, offering good pay for soldiers is the only way to maintain their war effort with high levels of domestic support."
Russia is now recruiting about 1,000 men a day to fight in Ukraine, but Adm. Tony Radakin, the head of Britain's armed forces, said Sunday that Russia lost an average of 1,500 soldiers a day in October alone.
The death bonuses are also causing friction among some Russians, with relatives appearing to try to claim part of a soldier's death benefits.
The payouts are also causing budget deficits for the Russian government, driving up the national interest rate to 21% and creating a labor crunch, as men are choosing to head to war rather than work in factories back home.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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