Russia is preparing for the return of "heroes and criminals"

For the Russian wife killer Azamat Iskaliyev, war was his ticket out of prison.

The 2021-year-old had served less than a third of a nine-year prison sentence for murder, for stabbing his wife in a car in the summer of XNUMX after she filed for divorce, when he was released and pardoned by Russia in exchange for his participation in the war in Ukraine.

Six months on the battlefield did not diminish his penchant for violent revenge on women who rejected him.

After returning to civilian life, in October last year he stabbed his ex-girlfriend more than 60 times in the shop where she worked after she resisted his advances. In July he was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for the brutal murder.

The Iskaliyev case, reconstructed from court records in the city of Saratov and local media reports from the trial, is a shocking example of the social problems Russia could face when hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including pardoned prisoners, return home after the eventual end of the war.

“Overall, perhaps more than 1,5 million Russian men and women participated in the war by early 2025,” said Mark Galeotti, a British expert on Russia and author of a report on Moscow’s demobilization challenges, which he produced for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

“As more and more of them demobilize and return home, Russia will face an influx of veterans... who are carrying the psychological consequences of war.”

Such concerns reach all the way to the top, with President Vladimir Putin seeing the possibility of a massive military return as a potential risk that he wants to carefully control to avoid destabilizing the society and political system he has built, three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters.

The goal, one source said, is to avoid a repeat of the social upheaval that followed the end of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, when returnees joined the wave of organized crime that marked the 1990s.

Many of those returning to civilian life will never earn anywhere near as much as they do now, which will cause dissatisfaction, the same source added.

A recruit from Moscow, for example, can now earn at least 5,2 million rubles ($65.000) in their first year in Ukraine, including a one-time signing bonus of 1,9 million rubles ($24.000), which is almost equal to the average annual salary in the capital.

The Kremlin, the Russian Defense Ministry and the Justice Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the risks posed by the return of soldiers from Ukraine.

Iskaliyev, who pleaded guilty to both murders and is serving a second sentence in a maximum-security penal colony, was not available for comment by Reuters.

The challenges of managing returning veterans are not unique to Russia. A “significant minority” of the estimated 2,7 million Americans who served in Vietnam, for example, suffered from psychological and adjustment problems, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

A key difference in the war in Ukraine compared to many conflicts is that both sides deployed convicts on the battlefield.

Data from the Russian prison service and Ukrainian intelligence services suggest that Russia has recruited between 2022 and 120.000 convicts to fight in Ukraine since 180.000.

The soldiers who have returned home so far are mostly convicts, the seriously wounded or those deemed too old to fight. But the bulk of the army, nearly 700.000 soldiers, according to Putin, fighting in Ukraine, is still there.

The Defense Ministry no longer allows convicts like Iskaliyev back into society after six months in Ukraine, after the rules were changed in 2023, with officials saying it was unfair that criminals were given more favorable terms than ordinary volunteers. Now, like regular conscripts who sign a contract, they must fight until the war is over.

Civilians killed by veterans

Verstka, an independent Russian media outlet, calculated in October last year that nearly 500 civilians had been killed by veterans returning from the war in Ukraine.

Using open sources on war crimes from media reports and Russian court records, the organization said at least 242 people were killed and another 227 seriously injured. Reuters was unable to independently verify the figures.

Russian authorities labeled Verstka, whose publisher is based in Prague, as a foreign agent in December 2023. They alleged that the media outlet opposes Moscow's military operations in Ukraine and spreads unreliable information about Russian politics, which Verstka denied, claiming that they strictly check facts and do not publish anything they are not 100 percent sure about.

Another source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that the government fears the impact the mass return of veterans could have on the country's tightly controlled political system.

Putin already had a dangerous glimpse of the chaos that forces liberated in Ukraine could wreak at home, when the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a rebellion against the military leadership in June 2023.

A third source said the Kremlin, at Putin's behest, is working to manage potential problems through a series of policies, programs and appointments, including allowing veterans to participate in regional elections last year and allowing them to run in allied parliamentary elections next year.

Putin, who declared that the “warriors” who fought in Ukraine were part of the “true elite,” promised the veterans prestigious careers and took a personal interest in an elite training program called “Heroes’ Time,” designed to prepare them for leadership roles in civilian life.

One veteran, decorated tank commander Artur Orlov, was appointed head of the president's Soviet-style youth organization, the "Movement of the Firsts." Another, a former battalion commander, Artyom Zhoga, was appointed Putin's special representative in the vast Ural region.

Four other veterans have been given jobs in the presidential administration, at least three have seats in the upper house of parliament, while others have been assigned to positions in various branches of regional government.

At a meeting in the Kremlin with some of the participants in June, Putin explained the logic, which he described as his “deep conviction,” behind this plan.

"People who have made a conscious decision to serve their country, and thereby achieved personal success, should gradually occupy certain positions," he said.

“Afghans” and “Ukrainians”

Opinions differ on how justified the parallels are with the 1990s, when returnees from Afghanistan, dubbed "Afghans," many of whom suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and some resorted to drugs and alcohol to survive, found it difficult to reintegrate and contributed to the rise in crime.

Žoga, whose son was killed in Ukraine, said that veterans from Ukraine, who are already calling themselves "Ukrainians," will avoid the problems that plagued Afghan veterans thanks to the state's efforts.

This view is shared by a third source close to the Kremlin, who said that the end of the war in Afghanistan in 1989 was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, creating a power and security vacuum conducive to chaos. The situation is different today because the political system and law enforcement agencies are stronger, the source said, although he acknowledged that convicts represent a special category that naturally carries a higher risk.

However, others argue that returnees from Ukraine could pose a more serious problem than the “Afghans”.

Gregory Pfeiffer, author of "The Great Gamble" about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, told Reuters that the war in Ukraine had become a much bloodier conflict than Afghanistan, where the official Soviet death toll was around 15.000.

“The numbers are far, far higher now,” said Pfeiffer, executive director of the Institute for Current World Affairs in Washington. “It’s a much more bitter conflict.”

Galeoti, the author of a report on the challenges of demobilization, said he did not believe that the problems of returnees would reach the “intensity of the wild nineties.”

"But, given that there are now far more 'Ukrainians' proportionally to the population than there were 'Afghans', I fear that a time of great trouble may be coming."

Translation: NB