Just pay Russian soldiers to surrender?

Mar 2, 2022

Ukraine is offering° Russian soldiers currently involved in the Russo-Ukrainian War° around $48,000 to throw down their weapons and surrender.

Bryan Caplan sees some issues° though:

So he suggests a slight alteration:

The EU, in cooperation with Ukraine, offers $100,000 plus EU citizenship to any Russian deserter.

But won’t that be too expensive? Apparently not:

Even in a magical scenario where all of the roughly 200,000 Russian troops in the vicinity take the deal, $100,000 per soldier is a mere $20 billion. That’s less than one-fifth of what Germany now plans to spend on defense in 2022 alone.