Some soldiers report being punished for resisting extortion. Troops in certain units have been asked to pay bribes to go on leave, secure transfers to another regiment or avoid going as “meat” on the next high-mortality assault, according to the complaints. One soldier named Mikhail told The Times that some commanders collected bribes to exclude soldiers from the most dangerous assaults but would sometimes take the money and send them on the mission anyway.
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Some soldiers report being punished for resisting extortion. Troops in certain units have been asked to pay bribes to go on leave, secure transfers to another regiment or avoid going as “meat” on the next high-mortality assault, according to the complaints. One soldier named Mikhail told The Times that some commanders collected bribes to exclude soldiers from the most dangerous assaults but would sometimes take the money and send them on the mission anyway.
How Russia’s War Machine Brutalizes and Exploits Its Own Soldiers
By Paul Sonne , Anton Troianovski , Milana Mazaeva , Nataliya Vasilyeva and Alina Lobzina The New York Times , Dec. 31, 2025 President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has built a war machine in Ukraine with an insatiable demand for men. Underpinning that machine is a pattern of brutality and coercion in which commanders dole out abuse as punishment while exploiting soldiers — even the gravely ill or injured — to keep them on the battlefield, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Mr. Putin has hailed the troops fighting his war of attrition as sacred heroes, and Russian society as the most important weapon in his forces’ advance on the battlefield. But more than 6,000 confidential complaints about the war reviewed by The Times show that anger and discontent simmer beneath the surface as the Russian leader’s methods for sustaining the war destroy countless military families. “We’ve been living in fear for three years, keeping silent...