Gerrard Kaonga reports in Newsweek:
Soldiers are complaining that their families were not given the 300,000 rubles ($5,000) they were promised for joining the Russian army. "Russian mobiks [mobilized troops] are demanding the 'promised' one-off payment of 300,000 rubles," which a military rep says was never actually promised. "That's obvious what you're trying to tell us here. It's that we've been simply f***** over. Members of the Duma should go instead of us."A video appearing to show Russian soldiers confronting their superiors about the money they were promised has gone viral on Twitter.
According to the English translation provided with the video, the soldiers are complaining that their families were not given the 300,000 rubles (roughly $5,000) that they were promised for joining the Russian army.
Twitter user Dmitri, who is with WarTranslated, an independent project concerned with translating various materials about the war into English, shared the video on Wednesday morning. It has already been viewed more than 150,000 times.
"Russian mobiks [mobilized troops] are demanding the 'promised' one-off payment of 300,000 rubles, which the military rep says was never actually promised to them," the tweet accompanying the video read.
"They yell that the deputies should go fight themselves in this case."
There were multiple reports earlier in the war that volunteers were promised significantly higher wages than average salaries for joining the Russian war effort.
In July, CNN reported that volunteer battalions from the city of Perm, which is near the Ural Mountains along with battalions from Kirov in Western Russia were offering a monthly salary of 300,000 rubles (which is just under $5,000). According to that same report, battalions in Bashkortostan, which is near the Kazakhstan border, were offered a slightly lower monthly pay of 280,000 rubles, which comes to just over $4,500. The report added that Bashkir people from that region were also promised an additional 8,000 rubles (about $130) daily for combat operations.
An International Business Times (IBT) report from April said Chechen leader Ramzan Kadryov allegedly promised volunteers a one-time payment of 300,000 rubles (about $3,700) to fight in Ukraine.
The video that was shared on social media seems to indicate that the promised payments haven't been made, at least in the case of the soldiers shown in the video.
One soldier, who was not seen on camera shouted: "No one was chasing us. I came all the way from Moscow to my native town to be mobilized with my friends because [of] 'motherland'."
"And because the President [Vladimir Putin] made an appeal to everyone," the voice on the video continued, according to the translation. "I came to the enlistment office, and the voenkom, the military commisar explained to me that as soon as we get there, within 2-3 days we'll get a one-off payment of 300,000 [rubles]."
A uniformed person standing in the center of a circle of troops, who was apparently a military representative, dismissed the claims and said this never happened.
A second military representative attempted to respond and said: "Now, regarding the 300,000, the deputies of the Communist party submitted a bill to the State Duma. It only passed one reading, and was taken off the agenda, the 300,000. Guys, understand one thing, I didn't promise you 300,000."
A soldier can be heard shouting in response: "Well, then they [members of the state Duma] should give up their party membership card and go instead of us.
"That's obvious what you're trying to tell us here. It's that we've been simply f***** over."Soldiers then started to demand that someone be sent to them to answer their questions regarding pay as the video ended.
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