Updated June 10, 2025 at 4:30 p.m.*
MOSCOW — “Want to go on leave? Pay up. Don’t want to take part in the next attack? Pay up,” says a contract soldier from Tyumen, in Siberia, describing the rules in his unit. A year ago, he arranged to go on leave from the front by promising to pay his commander one million rubles. He only handed over 75,000 rubles, promising to transfer the rest later.
Back home, he contacted military prosecutors and requested a transfer to another unit. As of February 2025, the case remained unresolved, and the man was still in Tyumen.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
In the war, money can buy much more than just leave or a break from assault missions. Soldiers receive up to 3 million rubles (€33,000) just for signing a contract, hundreds of thousands in monthly pay, up to 4 million for injuries, and 13 million in case of death.
According to a guide on army corruption by independent Russian publication Verstka, thanks to all this money, soldiers can purchase:
– A fake injury certificate
– A day off
– A job away from the front lines
– A place on the list for a state award
– Permission to use a mobile phone — which is officially banned
One of the most sought-after “services” is to stay away from assault missions altogether,
remaining far from the front line. As early as October 2023, Important Stories uncovered several cases in which soldiers had bribed their commanders to avoid being sent into combat. And there are other testimonies:
- “In Luhansk, we shared a house with mobilized guys from Tula who were hiding out
there for months, bribing their way out of combat. They never left. Paid 150,000
rubles a month,” said a soldier from one Russian unit. - “We’re always chipping in for bribes and gifts for those damn generals and officers.
Because the longer we sit in one place, the more questions people ask — like why
‘Storm’ hasn’t moved in six months,” explained one convict-turned-soldier to his
mother. He had been recruited into the “Storm Z” unit from prison. According to him,
his detachment stayed out of combat thanks to multimillion-ruble bribes. - “Roman also paid to get a post as quartermaster, far from the front. He didn’t say
how much — just told me he managed to cut a deal and it wasn’t free. I figured out the amount myself: for two months he didn’t send me or our son a single ruble,” said the wife of a mobilized soldier. The minimum monthly salary for a mobilized serviceman is 195,000 rubles. Roman also handed over two full salaries for a two-week leave.
Bribes for leaves
There are online forums where soldiers are offered ways to bribe their way out of front lines — Important Stories has previously investigated how they operate. Soldiers are promised withdrawal from combat zones, sick leave, time off, or even full exemption from the war.
Military doctors are often involved in these schemes. Paying a bribe to leave the front for a vacation or medical treatment is quite possible: in early 2025, a month-long leave could cost anywhere from 700,000 to 1 million rubles, according to Ivan Chuvilyaev, spokesperson for the “Get Lost” Foundation. But the promises that a soldier won’t be sent back to war are far less credible.
Want to go on leave? Pay up. Don’t want to take part in the next assault? Pay up.
Sometimes, commanders extort money from soldiers not in exchange for services, but
purely through beatings and torture.
At a military base in Donetsk region, the military prosecutor’s office found 17 servicemen being held in animal cages, according to VChK-OGPU — an opposition Telegram channel. They were beaten and tortured by their commanders, who demanded money in return for their release. According to those who were freed, the cages had previously held other soldiers who had been “zeroed out” — military slang for killed.
A contract soldier from Kazan recalled that upon arrival at his unit in the Donetsk region, he was immediately ordered to contribute money for gear and transport. They took 100,000 rubles and his bank card. When he said he had no more, they beat him: “One of the soldiers immediately started beating me, another stood nearby with a shovel, just watching. The commander was screwing a suppressor onto his rifle. He put the barrel to my head and said they’d ‘zero me out’ if I didn’t hand over the money.”
In the Storm Z unit — composed of convicts recruited from prisons — soldiers were thrown into a basement for even minor infractions. Getting out cost between 15,000 and 20,000 rubles.
Black widows
“It’s all very simple. Find a man who’s serving in the Special Military Operation, he dies,
and you collect eight million rubles. […] Lots of women are doing that now,” said a Tomsk
realtor in an interview with a blogger. For giving this “advice” on how a woman can afford
an apartment, both she and the blogger were sentenced to 80 and 85 hours of community service, respectively.
Women who marry soldiers and wait for their deaths to collect compensation are known in Russia as chornye vdovy — black widows. They meet military men both in occupied
Ukrainian territories and deep in the Russian rear — often while the men are on leave.
Online, there are groups where servicemen and women actively seek each other out.
It’s difficult to say how many women have married soldiers in hopes of cashing in on death benefits, but the problem is acknowledged not only by Russian military and propagandists, but even members of parliament.
One commander responsible for notifying families of battlefield deaths told Important
Stories: “In 2023, we’d get calls full of tears and desperate pleas to retrieve the body — even if it meant risking your own life. But now, what widows care about most is the payouts. Once they started offering a million rubles just for signing a contract, the army saw a flood of enlistments. Before, nine out of ten calls were asking about the body, now they’re all about the compensation.”
There are criminals who first deceive or threaten people into signing military contracts and then embezzle their salaries, injury compensation, or even death benefits.
At the Center for Support of Combatants and Their Families, a staffer recalled:
“I know women who’ve already been married three times — and all three husbands served in the Special Military Operation (SVO).”
“There are fake wives who marry multiple SVO fighters just to profit from the death
benefits,” wrote Z-blogger Anastasia Kashevarova.
Russia’s State Duma has tried to step in, introducing a bill aimed at blocking women who initiate divorce from claiming a soldier’s property. “But when it comes to black widows — the absence of morality is not something we can legislate […] If a marriage was registered voluntarily and the man dies, then there’s nothing we can do,” admits MP Nina Ostanina.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • Moscow is having a hard time replenishing its own forces as the war with Ukraine drags on. With battlefield casualties mounting and domestic enlistment efforts faltering, Russian authorities have relied on increasingly coercive or deceptive tactics.
According to Polish news channel TVP World, one of the newest tactics involves tricking Ukrainians into recruitment via Telegram messaging channels using false pretenses. This so-called “foreign flag” strategy sees Russian operatives impersonate members of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) to lure Ukrainian civilians into acting as unwitting proxies for espionage and sabotage.
Targeting vulnerable individuals, particularly in Russian-occupied territories, they then assign them tasks such as diverting funds, installing spyware, or sabotaging Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukrainian authorities have disrupted multiple such operations and emphasize that bonafide SBU personnel never demand suspicious actions or ask to install unknown software. — Bertrand Hauger (read more about the Worldcrunch method here).
Criminals and scammers
“Daughter, I’ve fallen into the hands of swindlers […] They forced me into marriage, made me sign a contract, threatened me with prison. Run, help me, please.” These were the words of an alcoholic father, as recounted by his daughter on a pro-government talk show. Unknown individuals had coerced him into signing a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense and gained access to the account where his military payments were deposited.
There are criminals who first deceive or threaten people into signing military contracts and then embezzle their salaries, injury compensation, or even death benefits. Almost always, the victims are “socially vulnerable men”— often alcoholics or those without family. These men are forced into fake marriages, so that money can be siphoned off through their “wives.”
Z-blogger Anastasia Kashevarova has flagged this as a widespread problem. Below are a
few examples.
A major scandal unfolded in Primorsky Krai, in the far-east of Russia, where members of the 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade were accused of running a recruitment-for-profit scheme. The scheme involved a warrant officer of an artillery division, his wife and two other women — a sergeant from the personnel department and an accountant of the military unit. The warrant officer and his wife looked for suitable recruits, prepared their documents. Using connections with fellow soldiers at the front, they tried to send the men to assault units — where the risk of death was especially high.
The accountant handled the paperwork, processing state payments. Two such recruits are known: one was married off to the personnel sergeant, the other to the accountant — who had first obtained a sham divorce from her own husband. There’s no confirmed information about whether these men were killed.
Large sums of money
A similar case took place in Tatarstan, where three civilians — not affiliated with the military — coerced three men into both signing army contracts and entering fake marriages. One of the victims managed to return home from a military processing center in Kazan, realized he had been conned, and reported it to the police.
The outlet Verstka reported on multiple abductions of men in Ivanovo Oblast, who were
then sent to the frontlines. Their families did not have access to their bank accounts, and it’s unclear whether the men themselves did. At least one of the kidnapped men was killed.
There are fake wives who marry multiple SVO fighters just to profit from the death
benefits.
In June 2023, a couple in Primorsky Krai convinced a man — who lived in their home and worked as a labourer — to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Before he was deployed, they pressured him into marrying a 63-year-old woman. By October 2023, when they learned he had been killed, they went to the bank with the “widow” and withdrew eight million rubles.
Of course, most Russian soldiers reach the front lines through legal contracts or
conscription. But many return home with large sums of money, and they often become
targets for scams, robbery, or extortion. While not all cases can be conclusively linked to
their status as servicemen, some clearly are.
“Servicemen coming from the SVO… We come back, and bandits in Ussuriysk or Vladivostok are waiting for us. I f*cking lost my arm in this war, came back, and now these bastards are shaking me down for my money,” said one soldier, moments before a suicide attempt. He had returned from the war to Ussuriysk and claimed that local gangs were extorting him for his military payouts.
At a military enlistment office in Vladimir Oblast, three employees gained access to
soldiers’ bank accounts and stole more than 11 million rubles in total.
According to estimates by Novaya Gazeta Europe, from the start of the war to December
2024, Russian service members were robbed of at least 141 million rubles, seven vehicles, and numerous other valuables. At least 471 individuals were implicated in these crimes.
*Originally published June 4, 2025, this article was updated June 10, 2025 with news about Russia’s alleged efforts to recruit soldiers among Ukrainians.
