War on credit. New volunteers in the Russian army set a record for loan deferrals in 2025

The third quarter of 2025 marked a historic high for the relief program, which was initially launched following the mobilisation announcement in September 2022, with 69,000 deferrals granted. By the end of the year, the volume of new credit holidays experienced only a minor decrease, falling to 62,500.

Over the past three and a half years, more than 720,000 such benefits have been authorised, amounting to a total financial relief of over 342 billion rubles, or $4,4 billion.

Because Russian law prohibits individuals from claiming these benefits on loans acquired after they have already been sent to the front lines, the Central Bank's data serves as a metric for tracking the influx of new volunteers participating in the invasion of Ukraine.

Reflecting on the year’s military recruitment, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president who is now the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, reported that more than 450,000 new contract soldiers and volunteers had joined the armed forces by the end of 2025, a figure slightly lower than the previous year’s total. An independent analysis conducted by Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, corroborates the financial data, indicating that the recruitment of volunteers into the Russian army shows no actual signs of slowing down.