Mayor of Russian-leased Kazakhstani city of Baikonur offers residents $3,500 each to fight in Ukraine

The mayor of Baikonur, the city in Kazakhstan that Russia is leasing along with the cosmodrome of the same name, has signed a decree authorizing one-time payments of 260,000 rubles (about $3,500) to residents who fight in the war against Ukraine either as draftees or as volunteers.

The document was signed on February 7, though Kazakh media first covered it on February 13, when a report about it appeared on the Baikonur prosecutor’s office’s website.

Russia began leasing Baikonur in 1994 and pays Kazakhstan $115 million per year under the lease agreement, which is slated to expire in 2050. After Vladimir Putin announced mobilization in Russia in September 2022, Baikonur officials vowed that nobody in the city would be forcibly sent to war due to its status as a city of federal significance under Russian law.