By Ekaterina Janashia | 2026-03-11

In Russia, burying a soldier costs roughly 60,000 RUB ($670). Last year, the government paid that price more times than ever before.

Russian authorities allocated record sums through the state procurement portal in 2025 to fund military funerals and war memorials, independent investigative outlet Verstka reported in January.

The data, drawn from public contracts explicitly referencing "participants of the Special Military Operation (SVO)," reveals a sharp escalation in state spending on the rituals of death: over 111 million RUB ($1.2 million) for memorials and at least 17.8 million RUB ($200,000) for burial services -- the highest totals since the war began in February 2022.

A grim financial trajectory

The surge offers a rare, quantifiable window into the scale of Russian casualties, which the Defense Ministry keeps strictly classified.

Contract specifications detail the logistics: body transportation, specialized work crews, grave digging, casket lowering and the provision of crosses, wreaths and national flags. Regional costs vary: Kemerovo fixes the rate at 60,000 RUB per person, while Novosibirsk sets the maximum at 77,000 RUB ($860).

The trajectory is stark. Procurement contracts explicitly referencing SVO burials were rare in 2022, when much of the funeral infrastructure was handled through existing military channels.

By 2023, the government allocated roughly 880,000 RUB ($9,800) for memorials and 5.2 million RUB ($58,000) for burials. In 2024, those numbers rose to 24.5 million RUB ($272,000) and 11.8 million RUB ($131,000), respectively.

The 2025 figures dwarf all previous years, reflecting both the intensifying fighting and a growing domestic infrastructure of grief the state is now forced to maintain.

Geography of grief

The data reported by Verstka points to specific regions as epicenters of military burials. In 2025, the highest concentration of funeral contracts appeared in the Novosibirsk region, the Republic of Komi and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

The reach of that grief extends even to occupied territory. In Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, authorities issued a contract for 899,000 RUB ($10,000) in November 2025 for geological surveys to plan new land plots for deceased servicemen and their families, an indication local authorities expect demand for expanded military burial space to continue.

The Russian state is also investing tens of millions in patriotic memorials.

Projects include an art object in the Samara region honoring "participants of local wars and the SVO," a "Memory of the Heart" alley in the village of Turovetz, and a "Memory Square" in Zabaykalsky Krai.

The most expensive projects include a 12.9-million-ruble ($144,000) memorial in Budennovsk and a 17.4-million-ruble ($194,000) monument in Karymskoye -- complexes that serve as both places of mourning and propaganda installations framing mounting losses as heroic national sacrifice.

The hidden costs

What's visible in the procurement portal is only part of the picture. Under Russian law, the Defense Ministry is responsible for burial compensation and headstones for all fallen soldiers -- much of that funding flows through internal ministry budgets or veteran associations that operate with little transparency, bypassing the public portal entirely.

The spending surge also reflects a broader militarization of the Russian economy.

The 2026 federal budget directs a large share of spending -- with defense and security together accounting for roughly 40% of expenditures -- toward the war effort.

For many Russian families, the financial burden of the war hits twice: first through the loss of a breadwinner, then through the rising cost of living amid inflation and wartime economic pressures.

That toll is felt on the front lines too. The lavish outlay on memorials stands in stark contrast to battlefield realities, where military bloggers and pro-Kremlin correspondents have repeatedly reported that soldiers must spend their own salaries on basic survival gear -- drones, thermal imagers and electronic warfare kits -- that the Defense Ministry fails to supply.