From the MT:
“Russia Faces a Fraught
Homecoming for Hundreds of Thousands of Ukraine War Veterans”
When President Vladimir Putin
praised veterans of the war in Ukraine this year as “the elite who defend the
Motherland,” he cast them as a generation of men ready to lead Russia into the
future. “It’s not frightening to hand the country over to people like this,” he
said.
Yet the return of Russian
soldiers from Ukraine is already straining families and communities, with
violent crimes drawing headlines and neighbors on edge. With some 700,000 men
still fighting, the country now faces the far larger test of what will happen
when they all come home. “War veterans often find it difficult to integrate
back into civilian society even with psychological support and rehabilitation
programs,” Dr. Jenny Mathers, senior lecturer in international politics at
Aberystwyth University, told The Moscow Times. “The absence of such support for many Russian
war veterans, combined with the emphasis in Russian society on men displaying
certain types of masculine behavior — such as toughness, concealing softer
emotions such as sorrow or fear — will make it even harder,” said Mathers,
whose research focuses on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Cases of returning soldiers
committing crimes have been steadily growing. In one recent example, Alexei
Marchukov, a soldier on leave from the front, was convicted of killing his wife
on their wedding night in the Tyumen region. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in
a maximum-security penal colony. Court records show that Marchukov, intoxicated
after the wedding celebration, fatally stabbed his wife after an argument. His
sister testified that he had previously signed up for the army to avoid prison
after repeated arrests for debauchery. After
the verdict was read, he reportedly told the court he hoped to return to the
front, a reminder of the revolving door between Russia’s battlefields and its
prisons.
Russia’s convict recruitment
efforts began under the Wagner mercenary group in mid-2022, with prisoners
offered a pardon in exchange for six months of military service. The Defense
Ministry took over the practice in early 2023. Analysts say the policy has planted the seeds
for future crimes. The war “is already affecting the country’s criminal
situation and will inevitably continue to influence crime in the future,” said
Villy Maslov, a researcher at the Ural Law Institute of the Interior Ministry,
who analyzed the war’s impact on crime in Russia and statistics on convictions
for 2019-2023. He argued that it is
“only a matter of time” before released convicts commit another crime and that
their reintegration into society is unlikely without state support.
There are currently no mandatory
psychological or mental health assessments for soldiers returning from the war.
Experts warn that in some cases, only a short time passed between sentencing
and deployment to the front — raising concerns that once back, these fighters
may turn their anger on those involved in their prosecution. The Foundation for
the Support of Victims of Crime in March called for ending the practice of
pardoning men convicted of serious crimes in exchange for fighting in Ukraine. And
in 2024, Nina Ostanina, chair of the State Duma’s Family Protection Committee,
proposed placing ex-convicts under permanent supervision upon their return from
the war. However, neither proposal was
implemented.
Like in Marchukov’s case, Mathers
said “there is a well-established connection between soldiers returning from
deployment to conflict zones and an increase in domestic violence in their
households.” “Several studies have been done in the United States, for example
about American soldiers returning from deployment to the post-9/11 wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is also evidence from other countries to
support the theory that the families of soldiers coming home from war are at
increased risk of abuse from their husbands and fathers,” she told The Moscow
Times.
Some 500 people have fallen
victim to violent crimes at the hands of soldiers returned from Ukraine, with
378 killed and another 376 surviving with serious injuries, the exiled news
outlet Vyorstka reported in February. The Kremlin is well aware of these
dangers. Putin himself has reportedly identified the return of soldiers as a
potential risk to social stability, Reuters reported, citing three sources
close to the Kremlin. One source told Reuters that the goal is to avoid a
repeat of the social upheaval that followed the Soviet Union’s war in
Afghanistan, when veterans returned to find little support and went on to fuel
organized crime in the turbulent 1990s.
To minimize public alarm, the
Kremlin has instructed pro-government media outlets to play down reports of
crimes committed by veterans, the exiled news website Meduza reported. Putin
said this week that more than 700,000 Russian soldiers are currently on the
front lines. Sergei Novikov, a senior Kremlin official, said in June that about
137,000 soldiers had already come home. Yet
the exact number of recruited prisoners remains unclear, with estimates ranging
from a few thousand to tens of thousands. It is also unknown how many returned
from service to civilian life.
Money poses another challenge, as
soldiers can earn far more on the battlefield than in civilian jobs. A recruit
in Moscow receives about 5.2 million rubles ($62,600) in their first year of
service, more than double the city’s average annual salary. Most of the soldiers who have returned home
were “young people” who need jobs, Kremlin official Novikov said, stressing
that “they need to return in a way that does not reduce their family’s income. The
return of thousands of men from the battlefield could also trigger a mental
health crisis in Russia, experts warn. “The memories of the terrible things
that these soldiers would have experienced, including terrible things that they
would have done to others,” could trigger coping mechanism like using alcohol
or drugs, self-harm and suicide, Mathers said.
Russian soldiers often face
brutal treatment from their own comrades on the front lines. Reports describe
“pits” at Russian military training grounds where soldiers who break rules or
refuse to go to the front line are held and sometimes tortured. Servicemen who
were drafted after the September 2022 mobilization reported such prisons in the
Bryansk, Volgograd and Orenburg regions as well as in the occupied Ukrainian
regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. While the Defense Ministry and state-backed
initiatives offer rehabilitation programs, even officials admit that soldiers
themselves do not always realize they need psychological help.
Nikolai Khlyzov, the human rights
commissioner in Siberia’s Zabaikalsky region, said that men returning from
combat do not want to attend psychotherapy and urged soldiers to visit
psychologists with their families. “They
say: ‘What, am I sick or something? What if they put me on some kind of list —
then I could lose my driver’s license and won’t be able to get a job’,” Khlyzov
said. The Russian government has sought to elevate veterans’ public image,
casting them as heroes and even encouraging them to run for office. During this month’s nationwide elections, some
1,600 veterans stood for election across the country, more than 800 of whom won
seats at the gubernatorial, regional and local levels. But critics argue that
this official embrace risks normalizing violence. “The Russian state’s emphasis on the heroism
of soldiers and returning war veterans and its plans to turn them into the
country’s new elites will reinforce the message that they will face no
consequences [for violence],” Mathers said. “All in all, Russian society will
be significantly changed as a result of this war,” she said.
^ Usually I would be all for
helping Veterans, but not Russian Veterans that fought and committed War Crimes
in Ukraine. Since the vast majority of Russian Civilians support Putin and the
War in Ukraine they will and should suffer the affects of it at home. ^
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