The Impact of the War in Ukraine in Russia: An Update

11/14/2026
By Robbin Laird

Regional budgets and the classroom are carrying more of the load

Two recent reports show how the war in Ukraine is reshaping Russia at home, below the level of national policy. One concerns money: Russian regions are cutting the bonuses they pay to men who sign contracts to fight, and in several cases the lump sums paid to families of the dead. The other concerns people and skills: students at dozens of Russian civilian schools and universities are now building drones and munition parts for the army.

Taken together, they show a war economy that is adapting rather than breaking. It is rationing cash where it must and drawing on new sources of labor and skill where it can. Both trends point the same way, toward drones.

The Money Is Getting Tighter

Radio Svoboda, the Russian service of RFE/RL, ran its story under the headline “Clearly there is not enough money.” It reports that St Petersburg cut its regional contract payment this month from 3.5 million to 1 million roubles. With the federal 400,000 roubles, a recruit now receives 1.4 million in total. The full 3.5 million is kept only for those who sign up for the drone forces. The city also dropped a 600,000-rouble bonus for veterans who take city jobs after returning. The cut followed St Petersburg’s announcement of 70.2 billion roubles in spending reductions and plans to borrow from banks to cover its deficit, though city officials have not formally linked the two.

Other regions have moved in the same direction, according to Radio Svoboda:

  • Mordovia set a 3 million-rouble payment in August, then cut it to 800,000 on 15 September.
  • Samara paid 2.2 million from February to May and cut it to 400,000 in August. At the same time, it raised the fee paid to intermediaries who bring in recruits from other regions, from 500,000 to 800,000 roubles.
  • Novosibirsk cut its total payment, including the federal share, from 2.9 million to 2 million roubles on 1 October.
  • Irkutsk cut its payment from 2.1 million to 1.8 million roubles in September. Governor Igor Kobzev called meeting the recruitment plan the most important task, while citing the “difficult task” of executing the 2026 regional budget.

Payments to the families of the dead are being cut too. From 1 November, Saratov will reduce its regional lump sum from 1 million to 100,000 roubles for claims filed from that date. Ulyanovsk has cut its payment to 50,000 roubles and Bashkortostan to 100,000. Kemerovo has cut from 3 million to 1 million, and Orenburg has stopped its 1 million-rouble payment for deaths after 30 June (Radio Svoboda). These are regional top-ups. Federal death payments are governed by separate rules and remain in place.

None of this amounts to a recruitment collapse. Economist Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, working from regional budget data, estimates that about 93,000 people signed contracts in the second quarter of 2026. That is roughly 9 per cent fewer than a year earlier, but still up from the first quarter, at about 1,000 a day. Despite the local cuts, the average regional bonus reached a record 1.65 million roubles in August, and some regions are still raising payments while others cut them (Radio Svoboda).

The Classroom Goes to War

The second report comes from an investigation by the Russian-language outlet Vot Tak, reported by Militarnyi. It found that students at no fewer than 40 Russian civilian educational institutions, 33 universities, five colleges and two technical schools, are involved in producing strike drones, munition components and other equipment for the army. The programs draw in students of law, political science, education and agriculture as well as engineering. Some work for free; others receive salaries and stipends from defense companies.

The work runs through several channels:

  • Assembly for credit. Since January 2025, students at the Nazarovo technical school in Krasnoyarsk Krai have been assembling FPV drones for the army. One student said he learned to assemble a drone in about half an hour, and that nine student-built drones went to the military in September 2026. At Nazarovo there is no pay; participants receive good grades and permission to skip classes (Militarnyi; The Insider).
  • Printed munition parts. The People’s Front, a pro-Kremlin movement, supplies 3D printers, materials and military orders to at least 11 institutions. By March 2026, Volga State University of Technology had made and shipped 2,500 sets of tail units and firing pins for VOG-17 grenade rounds (Militarnyi). The movement also passes on the military’s requirements and transports finished items (TVP Info).
  • Design bureaus with front-line feedback. At Pacific National University in Khabarovsk, the PolytechProm student bureau develops kamikaze drones, delivers prototypes to the military and refines them on front-line feedback. It has been building strike drones since 2024 (TVP Wilno).
  • Paid pipelines. Under Rostec’s “Wings” program, students at 15 universities work at the state corporation’s plants from their first year, earning 30,000 to 55,000 roubles in salaries and scholarships. Kalashnikov Concern joined in 2026. Below university level, Krasnoyarsk Krai has introduced a free six-month UAV-operator course for ninth-graders who failed their state exams, with 47 places across three colleges (Militarnyi).

What the Two Stories Show Together

The analysis that follows is ours, not that of the outlets cited.

Moscow has fought this war in part by pushing its costs outward and downward. Recruitment bonuses were handed to regional budgets. Production of simple components is being handed to schools and universities. Both moves spread the burden across Russian society while sparing the center, and both are now showing their character more clearly.

On the money side, regions are not abandoning recruitment. They are rationing. St Petersburg protects the drone forces while cutting everyone else. Samara pays intermediaries more and recruits less. Payments to bereaved families, a group with little political weight, are among the first to go. Each new soldier costs more, and some regions are covering that cost with borrowing, others by cutting what they pay the families of the dead.

On the skills side, the volumes at any single site are modest. Nine drones a month from a provincial technical school will not shift the front. The significance lies in the system. Russia is taking the distributed, improvised manufacturing that has marked drone production on both sides of this war and building it into its education system. Simple, high-volume items suit dispersed 3D printing, which frees the formal defense industry for harder work. Student bureaus run a small version of the rapid feedback cycle that defines drone warfare. Paid programs and operator courses for teenagers recruit a workforce early and steer it toward defense work. A student who assembles drones at 19 is a trained technician, operator or designer at 22.

The common thread is the drone. When money is short, it is the drone forces that keep the full bonus. When labor and skill are needed, it is drone assembly and drone design that reach into the classroom. Russia is reorganizing both its incentives and its talent pipeline around the kind of war it is now fighting.

Two cautions apply. Kluge’s figures are a warning against reading the payment cuts as a breaking point: Russia is still signing up tens of thousands of men every quarter. And the 40 institutions Vot Tak identified are a documented minimum, not a census; the mix of coercion and volunteering will vary from place to place, and the grades-for-assembly arrangement is documented at Nazarovo, not across all of them.

The more durable lesson is about the home front itself. Russia is adapting its society to a long war by turning regional finance and civilian education into instruments of military production and manpower. The strains are real, but so is the adaptation. For Western planners, the question is less whether Russia’s war economy is about to fail than how much of Russian society it can still absorb, and what it means that a competitor is treating drone skills as a national skill base built from the classroom up.

Sources

  • Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL Russian Service), “Clearly there is not enough money”: https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-rossii-sokraschayut-vyplaty-za-voennye-kontrakty-i-gibelj-na-voyne/33879626.html
  • Ilya Zalutsky, “At Least 40 Russian Educational Institutions Involve Students in Drone and Munitions Production — Investigation,” Militarnyi, 23 October 2026, reporting an investigation by Vot Tak: https://militarnyi.com/en/news/at-least-40-russian-educational-institutions-involve-students-in-drone-and-munitions-production-investigation/
  • The Insider (Russian-language summary): https://theins.ru/news/298629
  • TVP Info: https://www.tvp.info/96074666/rosja-drony-produkowane-nawet-przez-studentow-kreml-mobilizuje-wszystkie-sily
  • TVP Wilno: https://wilno.tvp.pl/96074072/studenci-w-rosji-produkuja-drony-bojowe-wedlug-vot-tak-dotyczy-to-co-najmniej-40-placowek