Russia’s new middle class can’t afford for Putin’s war to end

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/24/russias-new-middle-class-cant-afford-for-putins-war-to-end/

by BkkGrl

41 comments

  1. So keep dying then. Better be dead than poor in that strange country I guess…

  2. Russia could achieve the same by just sending oil money for doing nothing instead of for working in war industry or joining military.

  3. # Russia’s new middle class can’t afford for Putin’s war to end

    ‘Deathonomics’ is transforming Russian society. Few would welcome peace. Soldiers can earn £74,000 for their first year of military service for Russia

    The Russian city of Volgograd was the location of one of the bloodiest fights in world history. The seven-month-long Battle of Stalingrad, as the city was known in 1943, claimed half a million Soviet lives.More than 80 years later, the Russian version of Facebook is awash with government ads encouraging men in the city to join today’s war effort in Ukraine.“Men aged 18 to 63, we consider those with diseases – HIV, hepatitis. We accept those on parole and convicts,” reads one such ad on Vkontakte, or VK, as it is known.Having flat feet, an intellectual disability or being a foreigner also need not be a disqualifier, it adds. In return, big prizes await. One advert offers 8m rubles (£74,000) for the first year of military service – more than 10 times the region’s average wage of 712,883 rubles (£6,592) last year.This includes hefty sign-on bonuses, extra payments for those with children and other perks like priority nursery places, discounted mortgages and tax breaks.The payments are one example of how Russia’s war economy has created a new middle class in the country’s industrial heartlands.

    Military families are receiving big cheques while men are on the frontlines, many of them facing death.Blue-collar workers’ wages have also surged in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.While money is a paltry way to make up for the death of a loved one, there are some Russians on the home front who do not want the war to end. It comes as Donald Trump and European leaders try to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, seemingly with little success.Running out of patience with Moscow’s tricks and bombardments, Volodymyr Zelensky warned: “They don’t want to end this war.”While the comment was aimed at Vladimir Putin, Russians lifted out of poverty as a result of the conflict may also feel apprehensive. For many of the new middle class, they cannot afford peace.

  4. Poor guys! Apparently being the largest country on Earth, full of natural resources is not enough…

  6. The women marrying and remarrying to cash in ten different death paychecks can’t afford for the consequences to Dutch disease to kick in just yet, they have five more marriages to go through for their business enterprise.

  7. >“I call this deathonomics,” says Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev …

    >“This was actually a fascinating know-how on the part of Putin’s regime because he transformed the lives of – I’d say very impolitely – people [who were] kind of social waste, into a vehicle for economic development.

    people who were

  8. “I call this deathonomics,” says Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev. He co-founded the Cyprus-based Centre for Analysis and Strategies in Europe in 2023 alongside Dmitry Gudkov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition in exile.”
    What the article doesn’t say is that with the Ukrainians building more and more long range missiles, those war factories (and other strategic points like refineries) in Russia will get hit and those workers/people will die, in a country that already has huge problems with natality.

    Russia will be a wasteland after the war with rich widows who have to pay a lot of money just to buy gas to go to their gyms.

  11. Everyone should always remember this whenever anyone says the civilians are not complicit in Ukraine’s suffering.

  12. “Putins war” – but somehow regular Russians don’t want it to end because it is beneficial to them? Let’s just stop with these excuses.

    It’s been almost 4 years, if Russian society had any problems with killing Ukrainians – they would have shown it. Now we have to believe in some mythical good Russians who are the absolute majority and yet undetectable at the same time. Do I have to go to CERN to find proof of their existence? Are they in the Upside-Down land? Who and where are they?

  13. People were praising Hunger Game’s insight but people still wouldnt recognise misery when it knock on their door. This is litteraly turning the death of poor people into profit. Pretty straightforward as well.

  14. After all they’ve done, there shouldn’t be such thing as “middle class” in Russia.

  15. I feel like we need a Thomas Pickety analysis of the Russian economy. 

    This isnt a new set of questions. It goes all the way back to Nepolean. The “stimulus” of induatrial warfare is an extremely powerful force. 

    Powerful in its negative effects, positive effects, disruptive ones, the risk… it’s a big set of forces. 

    Russia’s excess military payroll ( in addition to pre-war amounts) is like 2% of GDP. Military industry’s payroll grew by a similar (perhaps greater) amount. Military-related imports by a similar amount again. 

    Thats all sloshing around the economy. 

    Putin’s disdain for the average Russian man means that he prefers this money goes to wives or mothers. He’s probably right that they will spend/save it more wisely. 

    But regardless… that is a lot of new money sloshing around the economy. 

    If the war ends, the military industry will be kept working on replenishing stocks. Then, they’ll search for export markets.

  16. Interesting read! While the article describes well the reasons for middle class wealth — how long can this be sustained? Where is the money coming from? Eventually, taxpayers and public deficit, no? And: no economic benefit is derived from an exploding bomb and opponent’s lifes shattered. Economic strain is exhibited by tremendous interest rates and staggering inflation. Eventually, the system must collapse I hope! How long can this go? We will find out…

  17. And that’s the actual reason the war won’t end anytime soon. This is pretty much standard Russian M.O. for most of its existence – impoverish the vast majority to the point of humanitarian crisis, then drip feed them a bit of luxury (by their standards) to fuel the war machine once it’s being kicked off.

    On the upside, their birthrates are no longer 6-7 on average like they were in previous centuries but slowly approaching 1.0, so I fully believe this strategy will burn itself out faster than a firecracker. Of course low birthrates are a worldwide problem, but one that will reward cultures that invest in quality (the broader West, but also China) rather than quantity (Russia) of their army in the long run.

  18. Putin is extremely popular with poorly educated Russians from poor provinces (80% of Russians). So, this war will not end anytime soon, unfortunately. A truly sick society.

  19. “many Western economists predicted it would face impending economic collapse in the face of the world’s harshest sanctions.” Yeah that doesn’t work if Europe still imports their oil and gas and sends critical components via 3rd party countries. Calling those the harshest sanctions is a joke. At every round, the EU goes out of their way to soften the sanctions.

  21. 75£ a year is a lot, do they offer that pay because most of those sign up won’t make it a year would be my guess.

  22. Imagine where the biggest benefit to your family is your death….

  23. Russia could have gone the completely opposite way…. trade with Europe, strengthen their democracy, become a decent and rich country. But then murderer Putin came along. It’s just a disgrace now.

  25. They are running a deficit to finance that crap anyway. It will end with or without war.

  26. They may have no choice at the rate that Ukraine is destroying their refineries

  28. Yeah, thisis something not too many peopke talk, at this point the russian economy depends too much on the military sector, of Russia withdraws from Ukraine I wouldnt be surprised if, just to keep the military expending, they’d attack another weaker nation

  29. Ukraine should do something similar and offer large amount maybe 10 times local wages to people joining the military in poorer Ukrainian region instead of drafting men.

  30. Judging by the scenario described, it is likely that the Kremlin will soon hire military mercenaries and place them in the first line, leaving the Russians behind them. The experience of using North Koreans has been successful (modern Hessian soldiers).
     Economically, this is beneficial.
     Kremlin don’t have to worry about money – just today, I read in the WSJ that one of the top chief at Exxon met with a Kremlin oligarch to discuss oil production.
    We don’t know how many such secret meetings between American businesses and the Kremlin have taken place.

    P.S. Meanwhile, the German Chancellor is already saying that social spending should be reduced. This means that there is less and less money

  31. I read the exact same thing 1 year ago. Gonna read it again next year…

  33. Interesting, thank you for posting this.

    Europe should better help arm Ukriane, which includes building more manufacturing capacity for drone parts like IC chips and batteries in Europe. Ukraine needs to do some economic damage.

    [Russia is facing a fuel crisis as Ukraine escalates attacks on Russian refineries](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-is-facing-a-fuel-crisis-as-ukraine-escalates-attacks-on-russian-refineries/)
    *”Ukrainian long-range drone strikes have knocked out around 13 percent of the Russia’s oil refining capacity since the beginning of August”*

    Also Ukrain needs soldiers. The EU should support the [International legion for Ukraine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Legion_(Ukraine)) in diverse ways: Send instructors so the legion can recruit more. Create a medical pathway to the legion can supply Ukraine with combat medics. Support their recruiting in countries where the Ukrainian citizenship and soldiers pay would be valuble. And pressure current refuges cases and illegal migrants entering Europe to instead fight for Ukraine.

  34. And then the son—who just two months ago was proudly sent off to war by his mom and the whole village—comes back missing an arm, a leg, and a chunk of his skull. And there are tears and hysteria. But it’s too late. Now he’ll live like that for the rest of his life—but hey, they got their money.

    Honestly, stories like these, and especially photos of war injuries—particularly the common facial mutilations—would quickly knock some sense into the rest of the Russians who dream of making money by killing.

  35. This article mentions huge amounts of money, but how long until it dries up? Where is it even coming from?

    If Russia has these reserves in the first place, why didn’t it invest in it’s own people, rather than war? (Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical).

  36. This is nothing new. War stimulates economies. Why else has the USA been causing wars since the end of WW2? Sure as hell isn’t for freedom.

  37. It’s pretty crazy to think how big of a shithole Russia is and has been. So much potential but their only exports are variations of oil and misery.

  39. Can anyone name anything innovative or market changing thing that was invented by a Russian IN RUSSIA since Perestroika?

    You can’t, because Russia is an imperialist state that takes everything for themselves and prevents innovation. Lots of Russian minds understand the first step to getting ahead is getting OUT of Russia.

  41. The biggest country on Earth, with a huge amount of natural resources, and they cannot make use of them?

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