Russia's War Falls on the Poor

The independent media outlet The Bell analyzed data on Russians killed in the war in Ukraine by region and concluded that the war is being fought largely by the country’s poorest people. The outlet said the trend is likely to deepen as the economy cools.

According to The Bell, for nearly four years, Russia’s official rhetoric has framed the war as a shared trial for all peoples and regions, emphasizing that sacrifices are borne equally. But casualty data compiled by Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian Service suggest otherwise, showing sharp regional inequality.

The share of people killed in Ukraine relative to a region’s population varies not just by multiples but by an order of magnitude. In Moscow, the rate is 0.02%. In Chechnya and Saint Petersburg, it is 0.03%. In Buryatia, it is 0.4%. In Chukotka and Tuva, it is 0.5%.

That means a resident of Moscow is about 25 times less likely to die in the war in Ukraine than a resident of Chukotka or Tuva. The Bell said it identified about 20 such "anomalous" regions.

The Bell’s analysis argued that, for most regions, one rule holds: the share of wartime deaths correlates directly with a key indicator of living standards: the proportion of people living below the poverty line. Under Russia’s official methodology, people are classified as poor if their income falls below the subsistence minimum set by the state statistics agency, Rosstat. As of January 1, 2026, that threshold is R8,939 (about $115) a month.

The outlet said the correlation reflects a shift in recruitment strategy. By the second year of the war, after gauging public backlash to the mobilization of 300,000 reservists in September 2022, Russian authorities moved toward recruiting contract soldiers. Recruits are promised high salaries and one-time signing bonuses that are large by the standards of most Russian regions.

The Bell separated out losses among volunteers and those who signed contracts with the Defense Ministry, and found the same correlation for contract soldiers as for the military overall.

By contrast, the publication said the death rate is not linked to other indicators. It tested the relationship with measures such as a region’s overall wealth: gross regional product per capita and wage growth.

The regional distribution of deaths supports what The Bell described as a likely Kremlin strategy: keeping the burdens of war as far as possible from regions considered crucial to maintaining social order and security while drawing more heavily from remote, poorer eastern regions with strained budgets and a high share of non-Russian populations.

As economic growth slows and wage increases lose momentum, The Bell said, the pattern is likely to intensify. Economic conditions in individual regions affect the size of bonuses offered to contract recruits. But the influence of that factor on regional losses is declining, The Bell said, because some regions are willing to sign up residents from elsewhere by offering higher one-time payments.