REUTERS
Russia has to spend approximately EUR 79 million per month in order to pay the public service salaries and the pensions in the occupied territory in Donbas, according to calculations by BILD, a German tabloid.
BILD refers to official documents of the two self-proclaimed "People's Republics", the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine and individual statements about salaries in various areas.
For the pensions of 653,000 people in the occupied region of Donetsk and 425,791 pensioners in the region of Luhansk alone, Russia pays RUB 2,418,378,168 per month – that corresponds to just over EUR 30 million.
The 30,000 Russian and Ukrainian fighters, who are still working for the "People's Republics" or their donors, are particularly expensive. Whereas a teacher earns around EUR 50 per month in the "Republics," a soldier – depending on his rank – earns between EUR 90 and EUR 465, which is up to nine times as much.
"Even if Russia's expenses were limited to the salaries in the public, mostly nationalized, sector and individual social services such as pensions, these costs of approximately one billion euros per year are comparable to the state budgets of countries like Armenia or the Republic of Moldova," BILD wrote.
According to the tabloid's estimates, this corresponds to 0.6 % of yearly expenses in the Russian state budget.
However, these expenses are probably only one part of Russia's overall expenses for the supported regions in the east of Ukraine. Subsidized gas, fuel, oil, and food, humanitarian payments in kind and also the ammunition for continuing the war against Ukraine should also amount to several hundred millions euros per year.
Approximately seven million 50-, 100-, and 500-rouble notes are required each month in order to pay the salaries that Russia took over. The intelligence service mostly knows how this money is travelling. The five tons of bank notes are not delivered by the "humanitarian aid convoy" that arrives every few weeks. The latter mostly serves as propaganda.
Instead, heavily guarded trains bring tons of bank notes and coins into Ukraine – illegally, of course –once a month. On board these trains are not only the salaries for civil and military work, but also tons of ammunition and other war material.
According to Ukraine, the money is transported by heavily guarded military convoys from the three big train stations into the cities and villages of the occupied Donbass. There it is paid out to the people in banks or state offices – or nationalized offices.