[selivanovp]

You're missing/mixing the concepts.

Conscripts army exists in Russia for decades, it's a mandatory service unless you are not fit due to some illness or due to higher education exceptions. Russia conscripts from every region proportionally to a population about 160k people every half a year (1 year mandatory service). These people do not participate in Ukrainian war directly unless they're part of the border guard and Ukraine tries to breach it.

And there's a professional army, with contracts. That's who is fighting in Ukraine. Conscripts after their mandatory service is finished may sign or not sign a professional contract. MoD hires soldiers in every region, pays good salaries, but this salary is very lucrative for periphery regions, but not as attractive compared to some jobs in cities like Moscow or St.Petersburg. Yet, they increased bonuses for two capitals compared to other cities. So, overall, most soldiers are not from Msk or SPb, but every region has enough volunteers so far to not mobilize.

[mopsi]

You conveniently forget the part where conscripts are coerced into signing up for the professional contract, or the signatures are falsified altogether without them even knowing.

  Semyon* (name changed) was conscripted in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, having served in the Pskov region of northwestern Russia for the first five months, where he was asked to sign a contract several times but refused. On 20 April, he was transferred to the Chebarkul garrison and signed up for professional service after just two and a half hours. 

  His mother says that on the way to the unit he complained of being actively pressured into signing a contract, after which Semyon was taken to a separate office, where a sergeant fired a gun next to him and showed him a video of dead and wounded people, threatening that the same thing would happen to him if he didn’t sign. Semyon broke under the pressure, his family says. On the same day, he applied to have the contract annulled, saying he had signed under duress, asking for it to be declared invalid as the commander had not yet signed it, but to no avail.

The article contains several other examples too:

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/05/14/unwilling-signat...

[Arnt]

I'm not missing anything. I call a spade a spade. There have been many reports of people who didn't sign voluntarily, which is conscription even if the wording above the signature avoids the word. And as for the good pay, there've been many reports of people who weren't paid.