Alexander Burkov, the governor of Russia’s Omsk region, says that his region has no money to pay out to the mobilised men.
“We have a budget shortfall of 13 billion rubles (€220 million). Our priority is salaries for the people, and we don’t even know where to get the money from,” Burkov says. “We can see that the Kemerovo region hands out 200,000 rubles (€3,350) to the mobilised, the Krasnoyarsk region pays out half the amount. The likes of Novosibirsk, Omsk, or Altay decided that no payouts would be made as they have budget issues. Moscow can pay 50,000 a month, but we can’t afford this."