- Interviews with 12 Russian contract soldiers in Belgorod, Luhansk and Donetsk describe officers treating troops as income streams.
- Soldiers say they must pay for boots, body armour, drones, liquor for commanders, rear-postings and medical leave — or face assault units.
- Those who refuse face earthen pits, beatings, or being “zeroed out”; Verstka verified at least 100 commanders who ordered or carried out such killings.
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Belgorod · Luhansk · Donetsk
Russian contract soldiers say they must pay their own officers to stay alive. Officers, they claim, charge for everything from boots and drones to decorations, furlough and survival itself — with those who cannot pay sent to near-certain death in assault units.
Inside a corrupt economy of blood money
The new single-room dwelling looks comfortable, with wooden flooring, a fish tank, a shower unit and a fitted kitchen. The catch is its setting: dug beneath the trenches around Baihavka, a settlement in occupied Luhansk. It houses the commander of the nearby Russian unit. Maxim, a deserter who helped build it, says the officer spent nothing — the work was unpaid, and troops covered the cost of supplies, devices and paint.
The same pattern extends to daily life. Troops are expected to buy liquor for superiors. “They have four korporativy [office parties] a week,” says Sergei, who secured a safer job as a cook through a bribe. He works from 5am to 11pm, handing more than half his wages to a commander for that assignment.
Conversations with twelve contract servicemen deployed in places such as the Belgorod region, Luhansk and Donetsk expose a pattern of blackmail and discipline. Officers treat their men less as fighters than as income streams. Graft and forced work have defined the Russian and Soviet militaries for decades: career officers wield the tools of violence, while conscripts become expendable in wartime or unpaid help in peacetime.
Moscow’s enlistment campaign for the invasion of Ukraine has flooded that structure with casualties and cash, producing an enormous combat marketplace. Troops portray the front as a bazaar where everything carries a price tag: drones, decorations, furlough and survival itself. As proof, they display images of transfers, appeals to military prosecutors, cash demands and assault orders.
This article is based on interviews with 12 Russian contract servicemen, including deserters, in Belgorod, Luhansk and Donetsk, plus documents they provided — transfer receipts, appeals to military prosecutors, cash demands and assault orders. Names are those given by interviewees. “Zeroing out” is soldiers’ term for murder of fellow servicemen on officers’ orders.
What soldiers are forced to buy
Kit, drones and liquor
Elite paratroop and special-forces formations receive kit from the army, yet foot soldiers must equip themselves. Since 2023 Wildberries and Ozon, Russia’s leading e-commerce sellers, have operated in occupied 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.
Maxim, 26, from Krasnodar, enlisted in August 2024 in Moscow, where signing payments were larger. He cites several motives: state propaganda and his stepfather’s death in the conflict. “Something just snapped in my head,” he says. “I didn’t even know the contract was indefinite.” It likely mattered that he had been detained with amphetamines and offered service instead of charges. He collected a 2.5m roubles ($30,000) bonus and reached Luhansk with no training, earning 200,000 roubles monthly until deserting in January 2026. From 8m roubles received overall, he says 6m vanished into kit and payoffs.
Levies start ostensibly to fund drones, gear or rations, says Anton, an assault infantryman. Yet once paid, “you’ll pay for ever so they don’t send you to the meat grinder.” Ukraine’s drone barrier has forged a lethal belt at least 20km deep, making mass attacks self-destructive. It has likewise forged a trade in living and dying.
Buying a chance to live
Maxim recalls his commander greeting arrivals by saying he had interred 12 companies and they would form the 13th. “He said we were cannon fodder and only 5% of soldiers survive assaults.” The following day he clarified that staying alive depended not on fortune, but on payment. Maxim and Sergei, another serviceman, each handed over 1m roubles for a move to the rear, plus a further 100,000-150,000 roubles each month.
Certain commanders seize soldiers’ cards and PINs ahead of attacks. Ilya, another deserter, says a headquarters officer holds them for protection. The fallen are listed as missing, while commanders drain their accrued pay from cash machines in Donetsk and Luhansk. A lucrative market also exists in medical papers ruling men unfit for battle. Even injury carries fees. “I paid 100,000 for leave after a wound,” says Anton. “To get discharged they ask for a million.”
What happens to those who refuse to pay
Troops who will not pay risk being hurled into earthen cells for torment. Andrey Bykov declined to surrender 2m roubles granted as injury compensation to his superiors, who went by Kemer and Dudka. According to his mother, he was initially cuffed and assaulted for days. Afterwards he was bound to a tree and shot. Personnel told by officers to murder fellow soldiers term it “zeroing out”.
Servicemen say “refuseniks” can be zeroed out through gunfire, lashing them to trees to freeze, withholding treatment after beatings or directing drone operators to strike them in combat. Verstka, an independent Russian news site, confirmed the identities of at least 100 commanders who either ordered or carried out such killings.
“Will these bastards ever be punished?”
Elena, 39, from Altai — mother and widow of soldiers in the same formation
Elena, 39, from Altai in Russia’s north-east, buried her son in February 2025 after he served under Kemer. He had handed over 100,000 roubles “for the needs of the regiment” and was recorded as killed during a mission. Last summer Elena’s husband, assigned to the same formation, absconded and filmed several accounts of shakedowns. He complained to military prosecutors that Kemer had seized 2m roubles from him. Yet shortly before the new year military police located him and returned him to Kemer’s formation. On January 11th, Elena says, he was fastened to a tree and murdered.
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