As winter approaches Ukraine’s Kherson front, Russian troops are collapsing—not to Ukrainian firepower, but to a “catastrophic surge” of seasonal influenza spreading rapidly through combat units. The 127th Separate Reconnaissance Brigade is hemorrhaging soldiers to respiratory infections severe enough to evacuate entire platoons simultaneously to field hospitals.
Soldiers have endured cold, wet trenches for months without adequate medical care, heating, or winter supplies, creating perfect conditions for disease transmission. Military observers reporting through ATESH, a Ukrainian-backed partisan network, describe the crisis as “criminal indifference” by Russian command.
Whole Units Collapsing Into Critical Condition
The outbreak’s scale is staggering. According to ATESH, entire platoons are transported to field hospitals only after reaching critical condition—by which point, effective treatment is often impossible. The crisis extends beyond the 127th Brigade across multiple Russian units along the Kherson line.
Supply chains remain broken; soldiers lack protective measures needed to fight off disease in brutal winter weather. ATESH describes deteriorating conditions with each passing day as temperatures drop further south of Kherson.
The Military’s Calculation
One striking aspect is that the command refuses to pull troops from frontline positions despite confirmed cases of influenza spreading through the fortifications. Soldiers remain in frozen, damp conditions despite illness because commanders cannot afford to lose bodies from the line, even temporarily.
This creates a vicious cycle where illness compounds in close quarters, spreading rapidly until soldiers become too sick to function. Commanders demand troops stay despite brutal conditions.
Winter Isn’t Even Here Yet
This outbreak is occurring as winter approaches, not at its peak. ATESH warns conditions will “only get worse” as temperatures drop further and flu spreads. Historical parallels are grim: Russia’s military has suffered disproportionately from disease during winter campaigns, from World War I to the Eastern Front catastrophes of World War II.
The current outbreak—the first “catastrophic” flu event among Russian forces since 2022—suggests winter 2025 could prove exceptionally lethal.
Russia’s Crumbling War Machine Stops Paying Soldiers
Parallel to the disease, a financial crisis reveals how severely Putin’s war machine strains under recruitment costs. In late November, Yakutia—a vast region in the Far East—halted all payments to military personnel.
Finance Minister Ivan Alekseev admitted on television: “Unfortunately, we really have this situation,” describing a budget shortfall so severe that the region could not forecast soldier payment demands or account for recruit obligations.
The Broader Budget Collapse Across Russia
Yakutia’s payment halt signals a systemic crisis gripping Russian regional governments. By late September 2025, cumulative budget deficits across Russian regions exploded to 724.8 billion rubles—roughly $8.1 billion—reversing a 472.1 billion ruble surplus just one year prior.
Sixty-eight regions now run deficits, up from 45 previously. The financial pressure sustaining the Ukraine war—particularly recruitment bonuses essential to attracting contract soldiers—is buckling regional finances nationwide.
Dramatic Cuts in Recruitment Bonuses
To cope with deficits, major regions have drastically slashed recruitment incentives. In October 2025, Tatarstan cut one-time signing bonuses for contract soldiers from 2.7 million rubles ($30,000) to 400,000 rubles ($4,500)—an 85 percent reduction.
Chuvashia and Mari El followed with similar cuts. Even Belgorod, a border region experiencing continuous Russian rocket attacks, reduced bonuses from $8,000 to $5,000.
The Human Cost Behind the Numbers
Behind abstract figures lies a sprawling human crisis. An estimated 10,000 to 50,000 soldiers across multiple Russian regions are lacking promised payments intended to offset the dangers of frontline service. Soldiers were promised signing bonuses of $20,000–$30,000 per contract—critical sums in Russia’s regional economies—plus compensation for injury and death.
Now, many regions are unable to fulfill those promises. Yakutia’s crisis specifically targeted soldiers from that republic, though officials promised that funds would be “located” and payments would be resumed “in the coming days.”
A Year of Escalating Recruitment Costs
Regional financial collapse is directly tied to skyrocketing recruitment costs. The average one-time bonus across 24 leading Russian recruitment regions was 1.23 million rubles ($13,700) a year ago. By June 2025, it rose to 1.95 million rubles ($21,700). By mid-October, it reached 2.17 million rubles ($24,100)—a 75 percent increase in twelve months.
This relentless escalation reflects a fundamental problem: as Russian casualties mount, commanders must offer increasingly extravagant bonuses to attract volunteers.
Federal Spending Fails to Keep Pace
Despite central government authorization of massive military spending, regional budgets bear the brunt of the burden. During the first half of 2025 alone, federal and regional authorities spent over 2 trillion rubles ($20 billion) on recruitment and military support.
Yet this enormous outlay has failed to prevent regional deficits. The reason is that the recruitment bill—including federal minimums, regional bonuses, injury compensation (roughly $8,300), and death benefits (around $11,000)—has become too large for many regions.
The Recruitment Machine Runs Out of Fuel
Evidence of system strain is visible in raw recruitment data. During the first half of 2025, 127,500 individuals received enlistment-related payments—down from 166,200 during the same period in 2024, representing a decline of approximately 23 percent.
Despite a 40 percent surge in Russian military recruitment advertising during that period, declining actual recruit numbers suggest higher bonuses and aggressive marketing are reaching diminishing returns. Analysts describe the contract-based recruitment model as “approaching a crisis.”
Where ATESH Gets Its Information
The grim picture of disease and discipline breakdown comes primarily from ATESH, a military partisan movement created by Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in September 2022 to gather intelligence on Russian military positions. ATESH claims informants embedded within Russian units, including the 127th Reconnaissance Brigade, relay information about conditions, equipment, morale, and health crises.
While Western journalists cannot independently verify accounts, Ukrainian defense intelligence sources told the BBC that ATESH’s testimonies are credible.
Trust, Verification, and Partisan Reporting
ATESH operates with a clear interest in demoralizing Russian forces, meaning reports should be weighed carefully and cross-checked where possible. However, the organization’s detailed reporting on specific units, commanders, and logistics has proven consistently accurate enough that Ukraine’s National Resistance Centre—operating under Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces—openly works alongside ATESH and credits the group with providing “high value” intelligence.
Consistency across multiple independent ATESH sources, combined with Russian official budget admissions, creates a credible systemic failure picture.
The Yakutia Finance Minister’s Rare Admission
One of the few official confirmations came from Ivan Alekseev, Finance Minister of Yakutia, during a November 21 television appearance. Rather than denying regional payment problems, Alekseev acknowledged them directly—a rare moment of transparency from a Russian official about war-related financial strain.
His comment, “Unfortunately, we really have this situation,” candidly admitted that Yakutia ran out of money to pay soldiers and could not reliably forecast recruit payment demands.
The Broader Financial Pressure on Regions
Yakutia’s admission reveals systemic problems Russia cannot hide. Many regions now dedicate nearly 3 percent of their entire annual budgets to military recruitment incentives alone—a staggering commitment leaving little room for schools, hospitals, or infrastructure.
By October 2025, analysts estimated recruitment infrastructure spending had increased fivefold since early 2024, potentially reaching $8.9 billion by year-end—nearly half of Russia’s annual higher education budget. Regional services are collapsing.
Flu, Neglect, and the Machinery of War
The flu outbreak and recruitment payment crisis are two halves of a single devastating failure: Putin’s war machine is collapsing under its own weight. Disease spreading through the Kherson trenches results from deliberate command decisions to leave soldiers in brutal conditions without adequate medical care.
The payment crisis represents not a temporary budget glitch but evidence that the central Russian authority is fracturing as regions, unable to fund the war, cut corners and break faith with soldiers.
Soldiers Face Impossible Choices
Caught between disease and debt, Russian soldiers face an impossible calculus. Frontline troops are sick, unpaid, and ordered to stay in positions where illness spreads unchecked. Meanwhile, recruitment offices struggle to convince new volunteers that promised bonuses will materialize.
Some regional militias report that potential recruits now demand payment upfront before signing contracts—a dramatic shift from earlier in the war when patriotic fervor and promises of wealth motivated enlistment.
The Morale Crisis Deepens
Word spreads fast among Russia’s military communities about regions that cannot pay. Social media channels and military family networks now circulate warnings about which areas honor bonuses and which do not. Soldiers in unpaid regions describe feeling abandoned by Moscow, watching promised compensation vanish while illness ravages their units.
Officers report an increasing reluctance among new recruits to sign extended contracts or redeploy to the most hazardous frontline zones. The financial betrayal compounds the medical crisis into a morale catastrophe.
Winter’s Shadow Lengthens
As November gives way to December and temperatures plummet across Ukraine and southern Russia, the situation is expected to intensify. ATESH predicts that the flu outbreak will worsen, troop conditions will deteriorate, and the pace of illness-related casualties will accelerate.
More Russian regions face the same budget crisis, forcing Yakutia to halt payments—a cascade effect potentially leaving tens of thousands of soldiers unpaid and demoralized just as the worst weather of the year arrives. The enemy is now disease, cold, and financial exhaustion.
Spring Will Bring Reckoning
For Putin’s war machine, winter 2025 represents a critical inflection point. By spring, if current trends hold, the cumulative effect of unpaid soldiers, collapsing morale, and disease-thinned ranks could force fundamental changes to Russia’s recruitment strategy.
The system cannot sustain itself. Disease weakens frontlines while financial collapse undermines recruitment. Command faces a choice: accept dramatically reduced manpower, implement conscription politically, or negotiate from weakness.
Sources:
United24 Media – “Catastrophic Flu Outbreak Reportedly Cripples Russian Troops on Kherson Front”
United24 Media – “Russia Can’t Pay Its Soldiers: Yakutia Freezes Military Bonuses Over Budget Crisis”
Newsweek – “Russia Has Run Out of Money to Pay Its Soldiers—Regional Finance Minister Warns”
Re: Russia – “The Crisis of Effective Contracts: Why the Kremlin’s Calculated Recruitment Strategy Is Failing”
RFE/RL – “Why Are Russian Regions Cutting Signing Bonuses for Soldiers?