WASHINGTON — Russia could be forced to end the war in Ukraine because it will run out of money to pay its troops, according to experts at the DC-based Institute for the Study of War.
The country has burned through roughly half of its $106 billion liquid sovereign-wealth fund, which is used to pay troops’ salaries and new recruits bonuses, experts said.
Moscow can likely only afford another 12 to 16 months of fighting at its current pace, with about 30,000 to 45,000 Russian troops killed or injured in Ukraine each month since its 2022 invasion began, ISW’s Russia team lead George Barros told The Post.
“The system for generating fighters worked for 2.5 years but it’s starting to fail,” he said Friday. “Russia is constrained by the laws of economics, scarce resources, and there isn’t an endless manpower resource in Russia.”
The Kremlin’s cash has dwindled as troop salaries and recruiting bonuses balloon amid staggering inflation, according to Russian Finance Ministry data.
Even President Trump weighed in on Moscow’s prospects Friday, noting in a Truth Social post that “Russia has to get moving” on ending its war because “too many people (are) DYING, thousands a week.”
That reality could create an opening for the US to push Russian President Vladimir Putin harder for a peace deal. Putin has been stalling negotiations after rejecting Trump’s full cease-fire proposal — a deal Ukraine already agreed to — a month ago.
“The United States can use the enormous challenges Russia will face in 2025 as leverage to secure critical concessions in ongoing negotiations to end the war by continuing and even expanding military support to Ukraine,” ISW’s Christina Harward wrote in a recent report.
Reluctant fighters
Faced with a nation of reluctant warriors, Russia has had to pile on the signing bonuses for new recruits so much that, “It seems to us that the Russians are not going to be able to recruit [enough] replacements per month,” Barros said.
“They’re either going to have to up the prices to go after that shrinking demographic [of untapped troops] or the money is going to be a constraint, at which point it will have to face hard decisions about doing another round of mobilization.”
As the war drags on, Moscow has been forced to offer increasingly higher incentive bonuses to attract new troops despite inflation rates in Russia of more than 10%, roughly four times higher than that of the US.
“Russia’s protracted war and high losses on the battlefield are already causing major economic issues in Russia, and these economic problems will likely mature within another 12 to 18 months,” Harward wrote in the ISW report.
Though Russia has other areas from which they can pull funding for its war aside from its dwindling sovereign wealth fund, it is the easiest place to find quick cash to finance the conflict, Barros said. Plus, “it would be a massive embarrassment” if Moscow depletes “this nest egg that they built for two decades,” possibly risking Russia’s domestic support for Putin and his war.
The general reluctance of Russians to join the fight is only fueling the economic bleed.
For example, the country’s Samara region in January offered a record $40,000 to join high-risk assault squads in Ukraine that reportedly have a survival rate of 1 in 20 soldiers, the independent investigative news website Vyorstka wrote at the time.
Such dramatic recruitment campaigns “suggest that the Russian recruitment rate has been declining” as sign-up rates slow — and casualty rates soar, according to the ISW report.
“Russia’s current reported monthly recruitment rate is either just equal to or just below the quantity needed to replace Russia’s monthly casualty rate one-to-one,” Harward wrote.
But that rate is likely even lower, as Russia lost more than 48,000 troops both in December and in January, according to the latest data, while Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev claimed in late December that Moscow recruited an average of 36,600 new recruits per month in 2024.
Soaring casualties
Moscow is currently suffering upwards of 1,200 casualties per day, a rate that began to increase late last year “as Russian forces made gradual, creeping advances in eastern Ukraine,” according to the ISW report.
Meanwhile, Ukraine — which relies on modern, live-preserving military technology instead of Russia’s soviet-era systems — has a loss rate of roughly one casualty per four Russian losses.
Even if Russia somehow manages to find the funds to continue boosting recruitment bonuses and troop salaries, “ever greater financial incentives in the future are unlikely to dramatically increase recruitment,” according to the report.
The Post in March interviewed dozens of Russian troops captured by Ukrainians who said they enlisted in the military for the money — with very few having mentioned joining out of a sincere patriotic duty — and none could communicate a reason or need for the war.
Another indicator is Moscow’s increasing reliance on recruiting foreign troops, as North Korea sent up to 12,000 soldiers to fight late last year and intends to send another roughly 4,000. And Ukraine also discovered, this week, that more than 150 Chinese citizens are serving in the Russian military.
But it’s nearly not enough as the total sent by North Korea would only “offset nine to 12 days of theater-wide Russian losses at current rates,” according to ISW.
Taking advantage
Moscow’s economic crunch presents a prime opportunity for the US to pressure Russia into finally complying with Trump’s push for peace. That can be done through continued military aid to Ukraine as long as Putin continues to delay cease-fire efforts, so Kyiv can keep up its campaign that is wiping out Russian troops at unsustainable levels.
“Ukraine — with Western aid — can accelerate the timeline on which Putin feels the strain on the Russian economy and military, forcing Putin to face hard choices sooner than he would like,” Harward wrote.
“The United States should call Putin’s bluff and force him to pay the costs of the war for which he has mortgaged Russia’s future.”
Russia is currently banking on the assumption that the US will not provide further military aid to Ukraine, Barros said. Without continued aid, Moscow’s untenable casualty rates will reduce, and allow it to keep up its war even longer.
“The center of gravity for this war is the continued international support for Ukraine,” he said. “There will be a military solution to the conflict — it just depends on, will it be a Russian victory in some form, or Ukrainian victory in some form?”
With time and resources not in Russia’s favor though, Barros further warned the White House against cutting a quick deal over an optimal one with Moscow.
“Trump can extract them the best deal if he lightens up a little bit on the timeline that he imposed on himself (of ending the war within 100 days of inauguration.) … There’s really no reason why you couldn’t say, ‘We’re going to end this thing, but we’re going to end it on the maximum, best terms’ — and that includes letting Russia mature in the vice they put themselves.”
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