2024-07-24 01:33:12
Residents of Moscow who sign up to fight in Ukraine will receive an advance payment of 1.9 million rubles (approx. year of service up to 5.2 million rubles (approx. BGN 107,350), the mayor of the Russian capital Sergey Sobyanin announced today, quoted by Reuters.
The total amount will include an advance, salaries from the Department of Defense, as well as regional and federal additional funding, according to a statement released by the city hall. The new payment system will take effect immediately.
The increase means that the annual salary for Moscow’s contract soldiers will be more than five times the average nominal salary in Russia, if statistics from the first quarter of this year are taken into account.
High pay for volunteers has helped Russia avoid mobilization, but some economists say it creates risky imbalances. They argue that high wages for soldiers serving in Ukraine have become a benchmark for the rest of the economy, leading to spiraling wage growth in other sectors as workers demand that their wages be more in line with what they pay in the army.
Russian officials say about 190,000 people have volunteered to fight in Ukraine since early 2024, out of 490,000 contracts signed last year, BTA reported.
Moscow is believed to lag behind other regions of Russia in terms of the number of volunteers in the army as a share of the total population. There are no official data on the number of volunteers from Moscow, but according to officials from the city administration, the total number of Moscow residents fighting in Ukraine as of July 13 is 45 thousand people.