Russian troops in Ukraine exempted from income taxRussian authorities have announced that soldiers and state employees deployed in Ukraine will be exempt from income tax, in the latest effort to encourage support for its military operation there.
Agence France-Presse reported that the new measure concerned all those fighting in the four Ukrainian territories Russia has declared as its own, although it does not completely control them: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov cited an exemption contained in an anti-corruption law, which the Russian authorities published the details of on Thursday evening.
Soldiers, police, members of the security services and other state employees serving in the four regions no longer had to supply information on “their income, their expenditure, their assets”, the decree said.
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, (second right) meets Russian military personnel involved in the war at an unknown location in Ukraine, in an image released last week. Photograph: Russian defence ministry press service/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockThe decree also granted them the right to receive “rewards and gifts” if they were of “a humanitarian character” and received as part of the military operation in Ukraine.
It applies to the partners and children of those serving, and is back-dated to February 24 2022 – the date Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Kremlin has rolled out a series of incentives for Russians to fight in Ukraine, offering cash incentives, banking and property facilities and promising financial aid to families in the case of the death or injury of loved ones.
In Russia, soldiers and senior officials close to the country’s military-industrial complex are regularly convicted in corruption cases in which large sums of money have been embezzled.