Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned that soldiers returning from Ukraine could cause serious problems in the country.
Modern.az reports that Reuters wrote about this.
According to three sources who spoke to the agency, the Kremlin is holding serious discussions about the difficulties of integrating veterans into society, their criminal pasts, and the risks of a sharp loss of income after the war.
Putin believes the situation could resemble the years following the USSR's withdrawal from Afghanistan. At that time, some war veterans joined criminal groups. Now, this threat is taking on a wider scale. 120-180 thousand prisoners have been involved in the Ukraine war, and some of them have committed serious crimes after returning.
Experts state that soldiers who received high salaries and bonuses at the front will not be able to earn the same income in civilian life. This could create dissatisfaction and social tension. On the other hand, there is also a threat to the Kremlin's political system. Putin already saw the chaos that war participants could cause during the rebellion of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023.
To prevent these risks, the authorities have launched a new propaganda program. The goal is to attract veterans into state structures by presenting them as the "future elite of the country." They are being given positions in regional parliaments, the Presidential Administration, and the Federation Council.
British political scientist Mark Galeotti believes that more than 1.5 million Russians have been involved in the Ukraine war. According to him, the number of veterans will be many times higher than in the Afghanistan war, and this could create "a truly difficult period" for the country.
Gregory Feifer, director of the Institute in Washington, notes that the Ukraine war is far bloodier than the Afghanistan war: while 15,000 Soviet soldiers died there, confirmed Russian losses in Ukraine have already exceeded 125,000, and total losses are estimated to be close to one million.
