Russian Ministry of Defense exaggerates number of new contract soldiers by one and half times - CIT
Russian opposition journalists analyzed the data on one-time payments and concluded that the Russian Defense Ministry overstated the number of contract soldiers by one and a half times: 640 thousand instead of the real 426 thousand.
This is stated in a joint investigation by the publication Important Stories and the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), Censor.NET reports.
According to data on federal budget expenditures, from the fall of 2022 to April 2024, about 426 thousand Russians received a one-time payment for signing a contract (195 thousand rubles at that time). The Ministry of Defense announced a figure 214 thousand more - according to the department, 640 thousand people entered contract service on the same date.
The unreliability of the data provided by the Russian military is confirmed by other observations. In particular, separate assault units of wounded soldiers have appeared at the front, who are sent on crutches and with Ilizarov apparatus. Analysts say that this would not have happened if there had been a sufficient number of recruits.
