Waging war with the poor

Hello! Welcome to your weekly guide to the Russian economy, written by Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko and brought to you by The Bell. This week we reveal our research into how regional poverty levels correlate with death rates in the Russian army, and explore what the slowing economy could mean for military recruitment.

With Russia’s poorest dying on the front in Ukraine, what does a slowing economy mean for military recruitment?

Vladimir Putin hails those who fight his war on Ukraine as “Russia’s true elite” and casts the conflict — still officially referred to as a “special military operation” — as a collective effort with suffering shared among all Russians. But The Bell research shows that is far from the case. In fact, it is Russia’s poorest citizens that are paying the human cost of Moscow’s invasion. And as the economy cools, that is only set to intensify.