Kremlin Faces Problems in Recruiting Veterans into Political Elite

Executive Summary:

• Veterans returning from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine pose challenges not only to Russian society but also to the political elite, where the Kremlin fears returning veterans could grow into a challenge to the powers that be.
• Putin has announced a program to integrate veterans into the elite, both through appointments to positions of authority and via elections to legislative bodies at the local, regional, and eventually federal level.
• Those efforts have been less than fully successful, given resistance from current officials as well as from veterans themselves. Putin, however, clearly feels he must continue these policies, despite the risks they pose to him and his system.

Since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expanded war against Ukraine in 2022, Russians have worried that the future return of veterans of that conflict will spark a crime wave and destabilize society (see EDM, February 25). Such fears have grown as the war has dragged on and the number of potential veterans, now estimated to be 700,000, already exceeds the notorious Afgantsy when they returned from the Soviet war in Afghanistan (see EDM, February 25). The Kremlin is also concerned about this, despite appearing confident that it has sufficient police powers to control the situation. Putin, however, appears even more concerned about something else—that the veterans could coalesce into a political force that might challenge the current regime (see EDM, January 19, 2024, May 27, September 18). To prevent that from happening, Putin has instituted a program to integrate returning veterans into the political elite, both through appointments to positions in the government and via elections to legislative bodies at the local, regional, and, in prospect, federal level (see EDM, May 22). That program has not been a success so far. Many current officials fear that the Kremlin could use the returning veterans to launch a purge of themselves and many veterans lack the necessary political skills or even interest in government jobs given their aspirations for greater rewards than those the junior positions they have been offered provide (VKrizis.ru; Novaya Gazeta Evropa, September 10; Vedomosti, September 18; MOST.Media, September 29; Radio Svoboda, September 30). Despite these problems, Putin is unlikely to change course given his memories of precedents from Russian history, in which returning veterans often proved, as in the case of the Decembrists in 1825 and during the Russian revolutions of 1917, to be a greater threat to the existing political elite than to Russian society at large. 

Two years into his expanded invasion of Ukraine, Putin announced that veterans of that conflict would become the new Russian elite. These words were clearly designed both to recruit more men for his army by reassuring them that returning veterans would be given positions of power and authority (see EDM, March 13, 2024). In the months since, he has pursued a three-pronged effort to provide substance to this ideological campaign. First, he has worked to ensure that angry veterans will turn their energies to pocket nationalist organizations rather than radical opposition groups, limiting the chance that they will threaten his power (see EDM, May 27, September 18). Second, he has appointed veterans to various political positions and directed lower-ranking officials to do the same (The Moscow Times, May 13; Radio Svoboda, September 30). Third, he has orchestrated the nomination and election of some veterans to local and regional legislative assemblies, a policy presaging the nomination of more to the Russian State Duma next year (Novaya Gazeta Evropa, September 10; Vedomosti, September 18). While Putin has had some success with the first, he so far has failed to achieve what he hoped for in the second and third—and those failures point to potentially serious political problems ahead.

That failure was clearly evident during September’s elections at the local and regional level. While Kremlin outlets celebrated that there were “at a minimum” 870 veterans among the candidates, a figure 2.6 times higher than in such voting a year earlier, the veterans formed only 1.85 percent of all candidates. This number hardly augurs well for the Kremlin in next year’s Duma elections (Vedomosti, September 18). There are two reasons this number is so small. On the one hand, for veterans to have a chance to run, incumbents or ambitious non-veterans who have been working in politics must yield their positions, something few are inclined to do, given that such behavior could condemn them to political oblivion (Svobodnaya Pressa, September 15). On the other hand, relatively few veterans appear all that interested in being recruited to run in such elections. Even victory would leave them less well off than they were as soldiers who signed up with huge bonuses and received supplements for participating in the war. Being a deputy in a city or oblast assembly is neither attractive immediately nor over the longer term. The only reason the parties were able to attract most of the veteran candidates is that a large share of the latter have not been able to find jobs at all once they have returned to Russia, and thus are ready to take any position they can get. These are the kind of people who will become effective Putin loyalists capable of winning support for the regime (The Moscow Times, June 2).

The problems of recruiting veterans to serve in more senior positions are even greater, given that most veterans lack the necessary skills to perform effectively. Many are ready to engage in corruption, even to the extent of exceeding the level the Kremlin tolerates or even supports. It appears that the veterans, in at least some cases, have gotten used to high pay and have assumed, as a result of Putin’s comments, that they are a protected class. That has led to the dismissal and even arrest of a large percentage of these appointees, outcomes that have likely reduced further public support not only for giving veterans such a leg up but even for the war itself. It has also led other officials to take aim at the new arrivals, fearful that Putin may use them to initiate a purge against those already in office. (For documentation on all these points, see the comments of Russian experts on the removal of veterans from more senior jobs at MOST.media, September 29; Radio Svoboda, September 30.)

Putin is unlikely to end his efforts to include more veterans in the political elite. There are at least three reasons for that conclusion. First, he has little choice, given that veterans form a significant share of the younger generation, which he will need to draw on to renew the elite amid the rapid aging of those in top jobs. Second, if he continues his aggressive foreign policy, he will have to promise those he wants to fight that they will not only be well paid while engaged in military action but will be taken care of once they come home. Third, Putin, perhaps even more obsessed with history than other Kremlin leaders, knows that returning veterans from earlier Russian wars have caused political as well as social problems and that he must do what he can to prevent any similar threat to himself and his regime. To date, his efforts have not been as successful as he had hoped. They have, however, not been complete failures. Putin, who tends to respond to problems by doubling down rather than changing course, is likely to continue this effort. Whether that will save him or the situation he has created very much remains an open question.