It's less that they've actively made things better for anyone and more that some of their currency is actually circulating to these folks in the first place. Think about the most dirt poor shithole town you can imagine in Bumfuck Kentucky, where there's no running water and barely electricity, and then make the place 30° and covered in ice for 8 months of the year. That's real life for some Russians. There's not any money to even make out there even if the effort was put into it. So being put in the army and paid a soldier's salary, even if half of it is being skimmed, is probably more money than some of these guys have ever seen in one place before. Add to that the requirement ability to travel through civilization, and they're suddenly living a whole new life they've never dreamed of before. I'd call that an increase in quality of life, even if you're only upgrading from Russian Peasant into Russian Soldier that's still a fairly significant boost in some cases. Right up until some Ukrainian high schooler drops a pipe bomb in your lap from a drone to complete his killstreak.