The sociological survey aims to study the willingness of men in Russia to join the Ukraine war by signing a military service contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (MoD). Through questioning the respondents about the monetary and non-monetary incentives that may motivate them to sign the contract, the study seeks to analyze the group’s expectations regarding the contract pay rates and the Russian state’s potential for recruitment of the male manpower for the Ukraine war.
The target group of respondents includes military-age men, ranging from 18 to 60 years old, who are residents of the Russian Federation and reside in large and medium-sized cities. Individuals permanently residing in Moscow were excluded from the study due to the difficulty reaching them.
The use of the term “special military operation” (SMO) in this report is necessary to maintain the wording of questions originally presented to the respondents amid wartime censorship. Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and communications government watchdog) insists that Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is not “an attack, invasion, or declaration of war”. Thus, the use of the term “war” has been criminalized. This study utilizes the term “special military operation” (SMO) to refer to the military activity of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukrainian territory. The alternative designation for it is the Ukraine war.
Survey methodology. A street survey was conducted between September 30 and October 5, 2024, during which time over 2,000 respondents were interviewed. To reach residents from various regions, 1,004 respondents were surveyed at train stations and bus terminals in Moscow. An additional 996 respondents were surveyed in large cities (with populations ranging from 250,000 to 1 million), including Vladimir, Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga, Tver, and Tomsk. The survey included screening questions regarding the age and place of residence. The main body of the questionnaire comprised closed questions about the participation status, the willingness to participate in the SMO by signing the contract with MoD, and the incentives for participation, as well as open-ended questions inviting respondents to specify the amount of money offered to them that could influence their decision to participate in the SMO (Appendix 1). The final question of the main body, posed in an open format, gathered data on the target group’s requests for other forms of payments for the SMO participants. The quality control of data collection was ensured through the audio recording of each interview.
Data analysis methodology. The sample size for analysis was 2,000 questionnaires. Due to the high variability in the estimates of death gratuity payments and the lump-sum payment (amounting to tens of billions of rubles), responses from six questionnaires were neutralized for payment analysis, while these questionnaires were still kept in the study for analyzing other variables.
To analyze the continuous numerical variable in the study — desired pay rates for the participation in the SMO — two measures of the central tendencywere calculated: the median and the mean. Desired pay estimates show considerable variability due to the cognitive and ethical difficulties respondents face in assessing such payments. A significant factor is the reference point, which, if known to the respondents, is based on the current pay rates in Moscow or relevant regions. Substantial variability in this variable may be related to subjective perceptions of risk, ethical norms, social status, financial status, ideological orientations, and other factors beyond the scope of this study. In cases with extreme pay estimates (outliers), the median serves as a more robust indicator against the outliers, providing a clearer representation of the “center” of the distribution compared to the mean, which is susceptible to the influence of extreme values (outliers).
Key Findings
The analysis of 2,000 completed surveys has helped identify four segments of the respondents based on their willingness to sign a MoD contract for the participation in the Ukraine war:
- SMO personnel: 16% of respondent
- Unconditionally willing: 13.2%
- Conditionally willing: 17%
- Unwilling under any circumstances: 54%.
A typical respondent in this study is a young (averaging at 31 years of age) unmarried man without children (60% of respondents are either single or divorced, while 59% do not have children), with a median disposable monthly income per person ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles.
Ideological incentives dominate the willingness to participate in the SMO. These include the opinions of other SMO participants, identified as the sole incentive by 24% of respondents, and the opinions of relatives, ticked by 16% of respondents as the sole incentive (versus 13% who mentioned only the payment). The respondents’ tendency to provide socially desirable responses is not something to downplay, as they may have intentionally exaggerated the significance of ideological incentives over the material ones, especially when completing the survey in the presence of acquaintances and friends. However, not all of the results are attributable to social desirability bias. Statistical tests have revealed that income is not associated with higher or lower willingness to join the SMO, a finding that underscores the secondary importance of financial incentives. Instead, support from one’s immediate social circle emerges as a significant motivating factor for joining the contract service for a substantial share of respondents across various income groups.
The responses regarding the pay rates that could influence their willingness to participate in the SMO do not consistently reflect a clear trend. Most of the hypotheses put forward during the study regarding the correlation between the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and their payment expectations were not corroborated.
a) The median desired monthly pay rate stated by the respondent is twice the actual monthly wages paid to the rank-and-file SMO participants, while the average is four times as high.
b) The desired estimate for the lump-sum payment and the injury compensation established in Moscow approximately corresponds to the expectations of the median respondent.
c) There is a marked uptrend in the willingness to participate in the SMO within the age brackets of 40–44 and older, while the expected monetary benefits are relatively lower. However, this conclusion should be treated with caution due to the small sample size in the older age brackets.
The average value of respondents’ payment expectations is much higher than the median. The mean value has limited practical relevance for assessing the potential to mobilize Russian men for the SMO and was primarily employed to identify correlations and develop explanatory models of respondents’ motivations. However, this approach yielded limited success.
Importantly, the “unconditionally willing” respondents, who expressed readiness to participate in the SMO before discussing payments and other incentives, unexpectedly reported higher payment expectations than the “conditionally willing” group. This paradox may be due to the better awareness of the “unconditionally willing” group regarding the actual payment rates. Among the “conditionally willing” respondents, some indicated pay expectations that were either much lower or unrealistically higher than the payments offered by the government. This points to a lack of awareness about the payment scale among certain groups. Despite a broad advertising campaign to recruit contract soldiers for the SMO, many Russian men remain surprisingly uninformed about the amount of the compensation offered.
Representativeness and validity of survey results
The potential risk of the authorities repressing the field researchers impacted the decision on the field study location and methodology. The survey was conducted primarily in more crowded areas, such as train stations and bus stops, where respondents were more likely to take time to complete the survey.
Due to a higher percentage of refusals to participate in the survey together with the reluctance to discuss the pay rates, the Moscow residents were excluded from the target group. A much greater effort in the field would require meeting geographic quotas. The age quotas were also more relaxed.
All of the above factors inevitably affected the socio-demographic representativeness of the sample and limited the generalization of the survey results to the entire population. Yet, by adjusting for the distorting factors that may have impacted the survey results, we are able to estimate the recruitment potential of the Russian army with better accuracy.
The following distorting factors have to be considered:
Firstly, the refusal rate for survey participation was 69.6%. Among those who declined to take part in the survey, 54.9% did so before finding out the survey topic, while 14.7% refused after doing so. Thus, nearly one in three respondents who were otherwise willing to take the survey ducked when it came to discussing the SMO. It is very likely that a considerable share of the respondents with strong anti-war stances and high risks of being drafted dodged the survey as they could perceive it as commissioned by the government.
Secondly, it is highly likely that some respondents may have distorted their answers to display socially desirable behavior. The actual number of respondents genuinely considering joining the combat action is evidently smaller and, quite likely, significantly lower than the number who stated their willingness in the survey.
Thirdly, the sample obtained from the survey is skewed toward younger age brackets compared with the national age structure of men aged between 18 and 60 living in Russia. If we were to extrapolate the results regarding the willingness to participate in the SMO to the entire population, the number of individuals willing to participate would likely increase by two to four percentage points in each age category.Thus, we observe the divergent effects of various factors on the final percentage of individuals willing to participate in the SMO within the sample. However, the factors skewing the results upward from the average values have a significantly greater influence potential than those pulling them downward. We, therefore, conclude that there is a probable overestimation of the recruiting potential for the SMO in the survey results. The reported share of 13.2% likely overstates the proportion of men genuinely willing to participate in the SMO.
The extent of the distortion cannot be determined methodologically and falls within the realm of evaluative judgments. The authors estimate that the actual exaggeration is likely to be in the range of two to– three times the actual number of individuals willing to participate in the SMO. However, even assuming that the sample characteristics led to an overestimation of the number of responses indicating willingness to participate in the SMO by a factor of five or higher, we are still talking millions of Russian men who are willing or directly planning to take part in combat.
