Russian soldiers stop receiving salaries: complaints coming from all over Russia

The conscripts and contract soldiers in Russia are not paid promised salaries, allowances and social benefits.

Source: Vyorstka, a Russian news outlet

Details: According to the calculations of the news outlet, since the beginning of March 2023, the salaries of the servicemen have been delayed or not paid at all in 52 regions of Russia and in occupied Crimea.

Instead of the promised 195,000 roubles [approx. USD$2,530 - ed.] per month, their accounts receive much smaller amounts.

Judging by the stories of the Russian servicemen themselves and their relatives, frequent problems with payments began in January, but at the same time, individual cases of withholding and non-payment of salaries, allowances and social benefits have been reported at least since November 2022. It is noted that both conscripts and volunteer and contract soldiers face this problem.

Since the beginning of March, dozens of messages about the non-payment have been posted in groups devoted to payments to conscripts on the Russian social network VKontakte.

In the comments, the authors of the complaints are often told that the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation officially transfers salaries from the 10th to the 20th of each month and that delays may be related to the transfer of the serviceman himself to another unit. In these cases, some admit that they received payments later. Others publish payslips from the personal online accounts of servicemen on the website of the Ministry of Defence, in which there are zeros in place of payments.

According to Dmytro Loboyko, the Head of the Regional Studies Centre, people from the Russian hinterland associated "the hope of qualitatively changing their lives, but they had to face reality" with payment for participation in hostilities.

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