Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is slashing payments to his soldiers wounded in Ukraine in the face of rising casualties and mushrooming war costs.
Previously, any Russian soldier hurt in Putin’s invasion of his western neighbor received a medical payout of 3 million rubles — which equates to about $30,000, according to Newsweek.
But under the new order — introduced by the Kremlin on Wednesday and signed by Putin — only the severely injured will get that princely sum, the outlet said.
That includes anyone who suffers life-threatening injuries or significant damage to their internal organs, including those with spinal injuries, brain damage or broken bones.
Everyone else — including those with lower-grade wounds like fractures, concussions and gunshot wounds that don’t affect their internal organs — will take home between 100,000 and one million rubles, which is the equivalent of $10,000 to $100,000.
The move comes as US researchers suggested over the summer that the Russian government is facing spiraling bills for its big payouts, Newsweek added.
In an article published on the website War on the Rocks, Thomas Lattanzio of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Harry Stevens from the Center for the National Interest estimated they had already cost the Russian government 2.3 trillion rubles as of May 2024.
That sum — which is about $24 billion in American dollars — totaled about 6% of the country’s total budget for the year.
Anna Tsivileva, Russia’s deputy defense minister, hinted at the changes earlier this month when she said the existing system never took into account how serious the injuries were — and that officials had talked about replacing that with a sliding scale, the outlet said.
Families of those killed in Russia’s invasion will still get about 7.4 million rubles, or about $75,000.
Still, it’s difficult to get a handle on exactly how many casualties the Russians have suffered.
But the Ukrainian government estimates that the Kremlin has lost about 716,070 killed and wounded since the war began in February 2022.
And those numbers are reaching ever higher.
Although the Russians are slowly taking ground in the Donetsk region, they’re paying a bloody price — Kyiv said Thursday that Moscow had lost 1,690 casualties in a single day earlier this week, Newsweek said.
Putin has turned to using North Korean soldiers in order to replenish his dwindling troops.
