Russian President Vladimir Putin reacts during the Summit of Commonwealth States, on December 22, 2025 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Vladimir Putin is allegedly relying on recruiting ethnic minorities from Russia’s poor regions to prop up his illegal invasion of Ukraine . The Russian president has been pushing his forces forward into Ukraine for almost four years now, and has racked up a staggering number of losses while doing so. The Russian army surpassed one million casualties in June, according to western estimates. The overall number of Russian fatalities is estimated to be five times higher than the combined death toll from all Soviet and Russian wars between the end of World War 2 and the start of the Ukraine war in 2022. According to the UK’s Ministry of Defence ( MoD ), more than 400,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the last two years alone. But the vast majority of these deaths come from ethnic minorities who live outside Russia’s main cities. In its latest update on X, the MoD wrote: “By focusing recruitment efforts disproportionately on impoverished regions, often predominantly populated by ethnic minorities, Russia’s state apparatus better leverages financial inducements, whilst also limiting the impact on those urban-dwelling parts of the Russian population that have greater political agency.” The update suggested Putin and his top team are “almost certainly prepared to tolerate continuously high casualty rates so long as this does not negatively affect public or elite support for the war and those losses can be replaced”. The MoD cites independent Russian media outlet Proekt , which reported that a large-scale study had found less than one percent of Russian state officials have relatives who had participated in the illegal invasion. With such a high rate of attrition, Putin has to keep recruiting new soldiers in order to power his ongoing offensive. But he faced national backlash when he tried to implement a partial mobilisation of reservists in September 2022, with protesters calling for the Russian authoritarian to be sent to the trenches instead. Now Putin has set up a system of hiring soldiers with promises of huge signing bonuses (up to $50,000, according to POLITICO ), enabling him to continue with his war effort while still dragging his feet over peace efforts from the west. Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 23 December 2025. Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/oWN3e1iDyk #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/hjseBZC7Br — Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) December 23, 2025 Related... After A 'Pessimistic, Precarious And Unproductive' 2025, What Could Next Year Look Like For Ukraine? Trump Official Contradicts Europe Over One Of Putin's Most Obvious Ukraine Goals Putin Threatens EU 'Burglars' For Trying To Use Frozen Russian Assets To Help Ukraine