(Bloomberg) -- Russia is changing the rules for payments made to soldiers wounded in the war on Ukraine as the costs of the invasion pile up.
President Vladimir Putin signed an order on Thursday increasing the one-time payment for those whose injuries led to a disability. Under the new rules, they will receive 4 million rubles ($40,404), according to the document published on a legislative website. That’s a one-million ruble increase from what any wounded soldier received under the earlier system.
The order will apply retroactively, allowing any soldier rendered disabled by war injuries since the start of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of its neighbor to claim the difference between the new allocation and the previous payout.
The Kremlin has been unwilling to order another mobilization, fearful of stoking a repeat of the domestic tensions over the war that followed the call-up of 300,000 reservists in September 2022. It has relied instead on offering ever-larger recruitment bonuses to persuade Russians to sign army contracts to fight in Ukraine.
The federal government also pays 5 million rubles to the families of those killed in the war, with regional authorities providing their own additional payments.
Before the changes, all wounded soldiers, regardless the severity of their injuries, were guaranteed 3 million rubles. Putin this week ordered a review of the payouts, and the government on Wednesday introduced a three-tier scale with compensation depending on the level of injury, according to a decree. The payment for injuries deemed moderate was cut to 1 million rubles, while the allotment for light injuries was slashed to 100,000 rubles.
Putin’s distant cousin and Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva raised the question of how to more fairly distribute compensation earlier this month after visiting a hospital in Moscow and meeting soldiers and doctors who voiced the idea.
Russia has had to allocate more of its budget to military spending as costs from the war rise. Defense spending will comprise 6% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2024, up from 2.7% in the full year before the start of the war, according to draft budget plans seen by Bloomberg News.
(Updates with new order from Putin in the second and third paragraphs.)
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