https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/04/01/on-the-front-lines-russian-soldiers-pay-officers-to-stay-aliveOn the front lines, Russian soldiers pay officers to stay alive.The newly built one-bedroom flat is nicely decorated, with parquet floors, an aquarium, a shower cabin and a full kitchen. The downside is the location: underground in the trenches near Baihavka, a village in the occupied region of Luhansk. The apartment is home to the commander of the local Russian army unit. Maxim, a deserter who helped to build it, says the commander did not spend a kopek. Not only was the labour free, but soldiers paid for the materials, appliances and paint.Russian soldiers must also buy officers alcohol. “They have four korporativy [office parties] a week,” says Sergei, who bribed his way into a rear position as a cook. He works from 5am to 11pm, paying over half his salary to a commander for the privilege.Listen to this storyThe newly built one-bedroom flat is nicely decorated, with parquet floors, an aquarium, a shower cabin and a full kitchen. The downside is the location: underground in the trenches near Baihavka, a village in the occupied region of Luhansk. The apartment is home to the commander of the local Russian army unit. Maxim, a deserter who helped to build it, says the commander did not spend a kopek. Not only was the labour free, but soldiers paid for the materials, appliances and paint.Russian soldiers must also buy officers alcohol. “They have four korporativy [office parties] a week,” says Sergei, who bribed his way into a rear position as a cook. He works from 5am to 11pm, paying over half his salary to a commander for the privilege.
>>532299733Listen to this storyThe newly built one-bedroom flat is nicely decorated, with parquet floors, an aquarium, a shower cabin and a full kitchen. The downside is the location: underground in the trenches near Baihavka, a village in the occupied region of Luhansk. The apartment is home to the commander of the local Russian army unit. Maxim, a deserter who helped to build it, says the commander did not spend a kopek. Not only was the labour free, but soldiers paid for the materials, appliances and paint.Russian soldiers must also buy officers alcohol. “They have four korporativy [office parties] a week,” says Sergei, who bribed his way into a rear position as a cook. He works from 5am to 11pm, paying over half his salary to a commander for the privilege.Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine warInterviews with a dozen contract soldiers in locations including the Belgorod region, Luhansk and Donetsk reveal a system of extortion and punishment. Officers see their soldiers not just as grunts but as a source of enrichment. Corruption and slave labour have long been features of the Russian and Soviet armies: professional officers control the means of destruction, while recruits serve as cannon fodder in war or free labour in peacetime.
>>532299791Russia’s recruitment drive for its war in Ukraine has poured blood and money into the system, resulting in a vast battlefield economy. Soldiers describe the front lines as a marketplace where everything has a price: drones, medals, home leave and life itself. To back up their claims, they show screenshots of bank transfers, complaints to military prosecutors, demands for money and orders to take part in assaults.
>>532299867Maxim, a 26-year-old from the city of Krasnodar, signed his contract in August 2024 in Moscow, where bonuses were higher. He supplies various reasons: government propaganda, the death of his stepfather in the war. “Something just snapped in my head,” he says. “I didn’t even know the contract was indefinite.” It probably helped that he had been arrested with amphetamines in his pocket and given the option of enlisting to avoid prosecution. He got a bonus of 2.5m roubles ($30,000) and was sent without training to the Luhansk region, where he was paid 200,000 roubles a month until he deserted in January 2026. Of the 8m roubles he got in total, he says 6m went in equipment and bribes.
>>532299959Russia’s army provides gear to elite airborne and special-forces units, but infantry must buy their own. Since 2023 Wildberries and Ozon, the main Russian online retailers, have been available in the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. “If you don’t want to spend money on a good pair of boots and a decent body-armour vest, you go into assault wearing trainers,” says Maxim.The collections begin under the pretext of raising money for drones, equipment or food, says Anton, an assault trooper. But if you pay once, “you’ll pay for ever so they don’t send you to the meat grinder.” Ukraine’s wall of drones has created a kill zone at least 20km deep, rendering mass assaults suicidal. It has also created an economy of life and death.
>>532300021Maxim says his commander welcomed new recruits by telling them he had buried 12 companies and they would be the 13th. “He said we were cannon fodder and only 5% of soldiers survive assaults.” The next day he explained that survival was not a matter of luck, but of ability to pay. Maxim and Sergei, another soldier, each paid 1m roubles to be transferred to the rear, plus another 100,000-150,000 roubles a month.
>>532300089Some commanders requisition troops’ bank cards and PIN codes before sending them into an assault. Ilya, another deserter, says a staff officer collects them for safekeeping. The dead are declared missing, and commanders withdraw the money they earned from their bank accounts at ATMs in Donetsk and Luhansk. There is a rich trade in medical documents declaring soldiers unfit for combat. Getting wounded is not free either. “I paid 100,000 for leave after a wound,” says Anton. “To get discharged they ask for a million.”
>>532300089Soldiers who refuse to pay may be thrown into dug-out pits for torture. Andrey Bykov refused to hand over 2m roubles he received as compensation for being wounded to his commanders, who used the call signs Kemer and Dudka. According to his mother, he was first handcuffed and beaten for several days. Later he was tied to a tree and shot. Soldiers ordered by their commanders to kill their own comrades call it “zeroing out”.Soldiers say “refuseniks” can be zeroed out by shooting them, tying them to trees to freeze, denying them medical care after beatings or having drone operators kill them on the battlefield. Verstka, an independent Russian news site, confirmed the identities of at least 100 commanders who either ordered or carried out such killings.
>>532300189“Will these bastards ever be punished?” asks Elena, a 39-year-old from the Altai region in Russia’s north-east. In February 2025 she buried her son, who had served in Kemer’s regiment. He had paid 100,000 roubles “for the needs of the regiment” and was reported as having died on a combat mission. Last summer Elena’s husband, who was serving in the same unit, deserted and recorded several videos about extortion schemes. He filed a complaint with military prosecutors saying Kemer had taken 2m roubles from him. But shortly before the new year he was found by military police and sent back to Kemer’s unit. On January 11th, Elena says, he was tied to a tree and killed.
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