Page 30 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine September 2024

30 I Cover story bne September 2024
with the Ministry of Defence in August.
Putin raised the federal payment and recommended that regions also pay new contract soldiers at least RUB400,000 each, Important Stories reported. But many regions pay far more than this. In August the one-time regional payment averaged RUB596,000, a 3.6-fold increase in less than eight months and up from RUB168,000 at the end of 2023.
And in 15 regions the combined federal and regional payments have reached RUB1mn or more. The highest regional payments are in Moscow (RUB1.9mn) and St Petersburg (RUB1.7mn).
These are huge amounts of money compared to the local average salaries. While incomes in the twin capitals
are much higher than the regions, the sign-up bonuses are tempting but not spectacular; in the poorer regions the bonuses are life-changing. The regional budget payments are mostly several times higher than the average monthly
income of local residents. The biggest difference is in Karachay-Cherkessia, an ethnic republic in the impoverished Caucasus on the border with Georgia where the regional payment is RUB1.6mn, or a whopping 68 times higher than the average income of RUB23,400 ($280) per month.
Skilled workers get top pay
The big payouts in poor regions have brought fresh recruits to the army, but for those with “in-demand” skills the pay can be even more attractive; an engineer or technician can typically double their civilian job salary or more.
The Ministry of Defence needs every kind of worker. While a simple private from Dagestan will be sent to the frontline as cannon fodder, a bus driver from Irkutsk or a construction worker from Yekaterinburg can find themselves working on a construction site in Mariupol rebuilding the city that was destroyed during the siege last year. The reconstruction work in the
captured and annexed regions is all under purview of the Ministry of Defence.
Workers from sectors such as IT, engineering and chemical industries are in even higher demand. Labour shortages are forcing companies to compete for workers, a trend that began during the pandemic and intensified with the onset of the war and the expansion of sanctions. Since the start of the war, more than 500,000 Russians have entered the defence sector, where average salaries have risen by 20-60%.
"In 2023, Russians' incomes grew from various sources, but in the first half of 2024 this growth was primarily driven by wages, which increased by 7.4%, with 7 percentage points attributed to wage growth," the CMASF report says.
Some experts have cautioned against prematurely classifying "special military operation" participants as part of the middle class.
Billboard in central Moscow prominently displays a campaign promoting the Russian Federation armed forces during the Russia-Ukraine war. www.shutterstock.com
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