Putin’s Police State Increasingly a State Without Enough Police

Executive Summary:

•  The Kremlin faces a serious shortage of police officers amid rising, increasingly violent crimes that are predicted to only worsen with the return of veterans of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• Many Russians are taking things into their own hands as well as forming self-defense units, many of which are well-armed. The Vladimir Putin regime views such groups as potential threats to itself but has no choice due to the lack of law enforcement.
• Putin has failed to take any meaningful steps to address the police shortage as doing so would take both money and men away from his military action against Ukraine despite the risks to public order and political stability. 

The Russian Federation faces an increasingly serious shortage of police despite having more police per capita than any other major country—almost twice as many per capita as the European Union and two and a half times more than the United States. More and more officers are leaving the force before retirement, and fewer men are willing to sign up (V Krizis.ru, March 5). This development is particularly worrisome to the Russian people and Russian rulers, both of whom remember how rapidly rising crime can grow into a political threat. Notably, more experts predict a new crime wave as veterans of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine return home (VKrizis.ru, March 30, 2021, March 5, 2023; see EDM, November 29, 2022, January 29, 2024, February 25; Novoye Vremya, March 6).

Russians are taking things into their own hands, arming themselves and forming various kinds of self-defense forces (see EDM April 11, 2017, November 29, 2022; Kavkazii Uzel, July 30, 2024;  Window on Eurasia, November 11, 2024). Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin views these as potentially threats and in most cases has worked to repress them. In some cases, however, Russia’s rulers feel they have no choice but to cooperate with them to prevent violent crime from rising any further (Kasparov.ru, March 14, 2024). Putin is now speaking out about the dangers the shortage of police represents, but he has not taken any meaningful steps to address it as doing so would require taking resources, money, and men, away from his invasion of Ukraine (Vkrizis.ru, March 5). 

Russian commentators and officials have been talking about the police shortage for some time. Its seriousness was highlighted last week by Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev at a meeting of security officials, which Putin himself attended and called for steps to be taken to address it (Window on Eurasia, November 30, 2024; V Krizis.ru, March 5). The picture the minister painted is dire. According to him, the ministry currently has 172,000 unfilled positions, which has increased by 33,000 over the past year. While not all of these are frontline officers, the department within the ministry holds the most vacancies as interior ministry officers working in other sectors have shown growth or at least much smaller declines.

According to Kolokoltsev, recruitment has become more difficult, with as many as 40 percent of those resigning now doing so before reaching pension age. As a result, he said, “over the past six years, the corps of district police officers has been almost completely renewed.” Former cadres have been replaced with new and inexperienced people or none at all. In 2024, half of the officers with ten years of experience quit. These police officers were the basis of the law enforcement service’s support network and in direct contact with the population. Kolokoltsev blamed these resignations on excessive overtime (Vkrizis.ru, March 5).

Retention and recruitment of Russian police is about more than just excessive overtime and Moscow’s policies are exacerbating the problem. On the one hand, because police salaries are relatively low, many police are leaving the service to get higher salaries in private security companies or to get the enormous military signing bonuses (see EDM, October 24, 2024). On the other, many, especially in the North Caucasus where joining the police traditionally has been viewed as a step up, are now making other career choices because they fear that once they are in police service, they will be forced to go to Ukraine and may not return alive (Kavkaz.Realii, February 26).  

Previously, this issue has been largely ignored or even dismissed as irrelevant because up until now, Russia had officers in police-related forces at its disposal such as the 340,000 men in the Russian Guard, the 225,000 in the Federal Penal Service, and 50,000 in the Federal Protective Service along with a large but unknown number in the Federal Security Service (FSB) (VKrizis.ru, March 5). If the Russian government uses them for police work, however, the country will suffer in two ways. First, these people lack the skill set needed in policing and will likely not perform well. Second, they will not be performing the jobs they were hired for, thus creating problems in other sectors (Window on Eurasia, July 2, 2023).

The Kremlin and the Interior Ministry have adopted various other measures to try to fill the role of the missing Russian police. Unfortunately, for Moscow and Russian society, these are creating new problems, many of which are likely to grow into even more serious threats than the current shortage of policemen. Among the most prominent of these are the following:

• Moscow has brought in whole police units from Central Asia, even though the Russian people are no more positively disposed to Central Asians in uniform than those who are not (Sibir.Realii, December 2, 2024; Window on Eurasia, December 5, 2024).
• The interior ministry has shifted police from one Russian federal district to another, including from those dominated by one ethnic group to those dominated by another. This tactic has further enflamed inter-ethnic tensions and increased public hostility to the government employing such an approach (Fortanga.org, March 3).
• Russian officials in some regions have relied on the notorious Russian nationalist Russian Community to perform basic policing functions, even though members of these groups often have criminal backgrounds and behave with little regard to the law (Window on Eurasia, March 17, October 27, 2024; see EDM, October 15, 2024).
• Moscow, at the same time, has used some non-Russian militia units and allowed non-Russian republics to form their own militias, setting the stage for conflicts not only with groups like the Russian Community but also with the Russian state (see EDM, April 4, 9, 16, 30; Window on Eurasia, September 27, November 11, 2024).

Ultimately, all these initiatives are stop-gap measures and will not solve the problem of a growing police shortage. Consequently, unless Putin redirects money to the police, something he is unlikely to do as long as his war against Ukraine continues, Russia is going to find itself increasingly in the unusual situation of being a police state without enough policemen.