Serious Crime Hits 15-Year High in Russia After Return of Ex-Convicts From Ukraine

Executive Summary:

• Returning veterans of the war against Ukraine pose an increasingly sinister threat to Russian society as violent crime in the country has skyrocketed, reaching a 15-year high.
• A return of “Afghan syndrome” and the inability to utilize specialized combat skills after military service have pushed many veterans to resort to rampant substance abuse and violence against family members, friends, and fellow citizens.
• The Kremlin’s dual failure of inadequately supporting veterans’ reintegration while applying leniency when prosecuting them for serious crimes has only exacerbated the situation.
• The gun could soon be turned on the Kremlin, given the wisdom, or lack thereof, of militarizing convicts with promises of amnesty, arming them and sending them to the frontlines, and then expecting them to become model citizens upon their return without the proper support.

Repeat offenses by former inmates conscripted into the Russian military to fight Ukraine now pose one of the biggest risks to public safety in the Russian Federation (see EDM, January 19, 2024, February 25, May 29). According to state statistics, from January to June 2025, more than 333,000 “serious and particularly serious” crimes against articles of the country’s Criminal Code were recorded, as tens of thousands of military personnel, many of them ex-convicts, returned from the front. This figure represents a 15-year high for serious crime in Russia. From January to June 2024, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs registered just under 302,000 “serious and particularly serious” crimes, an increase of more than ten percent over 2023 levels (Radio Lenta, July 10). Returning veterans of the war against Ukraine pose an increasingly sinister threat to Russian society, especially as loose guns and munitions proliferate across the country. The Kremlin has sought to co-opt these veterans as a “new Russian elite,” but uneven success in doing so could mean Moscow loses complete control of the situation in the coming months (see EDM, March 13, 2024, May 22, July 10).

Russian officials have tried to downplay the rise in violent crime among veterans of the war. One year after Moscow launched its so-called “special military operation” (SVO), Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that criminal allegations against SVO veterans were “lousy behavior” and not a matter of concern for Moscow. He concluded that law enforcement and the security services were actively monitoring the situation (Vzglyad, August 25, 2023). As such, government agencies do not track or provide any specific data about crimes committed by SVO veterans. Thus, independent journalists and media outlets have been compelled to collect and analyze these statistics.

According to independent reports, by April 2024, at least 1,130 Russian veterans of the war had been charged with “civilian” crimes, ranging from traffic violations to murder. In approximately two-thirds of these cases, judges recognized participation in the war against Ukraine as a mitigating factor. The only crime for which the military is judged more severely than civilians is the trafficking of explosives. According to Novaya Gazeta Europa, the number of war veterans sentenced in 2023 increased by 700 percent as compared to 2022, while the number of violent crimes against life and health increased by a startling 1,300 percent (Novaya Gazeta Europa, April 11, 2024).

The Russian military’s appetite for fresh streams of conscripts for the front led the Kremlin to ramp up its use of private military companies (PMCs) (see Jamestown Perspectives, February 3). While technically illegal under Russian law, these formations quickly became a prime source for soldiers. The most notorious PMC, especially at the beginning of the war, was the Wagner Group. In September 2022, the normally evasive Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted responsibility for creating the Wagner Group in 2014 to support Russian separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine. Prigozhin’s public confession came after years of denying involvement with the organization. His words marked a clear shift from the former secretive nature of Russian PMCs to overt actors following the Kremlin’s orders at home and abroad (see EDM, March 22, June 26, 2023).

Earlier, in the summer of 2022, Prigozhin had begun recruiting prisoners for Russia’s war, a trend that other PMCs, and even the Russian military, have since picked up (BBC-Russian Service, January 23, 2023). Interviewed prisoners said that they would receive a week’s training before being sent to the front. They were promised a presidential pardon after six months, even those who committed serious and violent crimes, and a salary of  100,00 rubles (about $1,870) a month (see EDM, August 18, 2022, November 8, 2023; The Guardian, September 20, 2022). One inmate observed, “The truth is, we, thieves and killers, are now fighting Russia’s war.”

From its inception, the Wagner Group’s activities were illegal under Russian criminal law and should have been subject to stiff prison terms. Article 208 of the Russian Criminal Code states, “Organization of an illegal armed formation or participation in it as well as participation in an armed conflict or military actions for purposes contrary to the interests of the Russian Federation shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of 10 to 20 years.” Article 359 titled “Mercenary Activity” stipulates that “recruitment, training, financing, or other material support of a mercenary, as well as his use in an armed conflict or military operations shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of 12 to 18 years” (Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, accessed July 30). In January 2023, the notoriety of Wagner’s military operations in Ukraine, Africa, and Syria led the Joe Biden administration to designate the group as a “transnational criminal organization” (U.S. Department of the Treasury, January 26, 2023). The Kremlin went the opposite direction, and in March 2023, Putin signed a law punishing the “discrediting” or spreading of “fake information” about any force fighting for Russia, including Prigozhin’s Wagner (The Moscow Times, March 18, 2023).  

The exact scope of the Wagner Group’s recruitment in Russian prisons and penal colonies remains unknown. Nevertheless, in May 2023, former U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby stated that at least 100,000 Russian fighters had been killed or wounded in the previous five months, at least half of whom were Wagner recruits and likely ex-convicts. Shortly thereafter, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) also began recruiting in Russian prisons and opened the way for other, MoD-subordinated PMCs to do the same (Library of Congress, September 14, 2023; see EDM, September 18, October 31, November 8, December 20, 2023, August 7, October 10, 2024). The MoD offered the same conditions as Prigozhin: six months of service, a pardon with the removal of criminal records, and a monthly salary (Deutsche Welle, February 4, 2023).

The Kremlin failed to prepare for the prospect of former convicts turned war veterans returning from Ukraine and engaging in antisocial behavior. This seems rather short-sighted given Russia’s past experience with “Afghan syndrome” among veterans of the war in Afghanistan (see EDM, October 25, November 13, 2023, January 19, 2024). Russian analysts see similar symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to those of the “Afgantsy” as contributing factors in the recidivism of veterans of the war against Ukraine, which includes rampant alcohol abuse, their inability to earn an honest living after military service, and resorting to violence. Another issue contributing to rising crime rates is that veterans acquire specialized combat skills that are not formally utilized by the state after military service but are of great value in the criminal world (Cherta, May 20, 2024).

In Russia, no centralized statistics are available on the prevalence of PTSD among combatants and/or participants in the SVO. Further muddying the issue, in 2023, many government agencies stopped publishing statistical data in the public domain, making it more difficult to assess the actual state of crime in Russia. In one instance, in January 2023, the Prosecutor General’s Office suspended the monthly publication of data on the number of crimes committed in Russia, stating that the action was undertaken to “improve the functionality of the legal statistics portal” (RTV1, December 28, 2023). PTSD is one of the potential causes for the increase in crime rates in countries that have participated in any conflict, and is exacerbated for returning veterans who struggle to reintegrate into society and find a job. Frustrations can result in finding an outlet through increased substance abuse and committing a crime. 

The Russian government has adopted a twin-track approach to the problems posed by returning veterans: minimize the problem in the media and implement modest assistance programs. In April 2023, Putin established a fund to support SVO participants and their families, the “Defenders of the Fatherland State Foundation,” with a budget of 10–19 billion rubles per year (up to about $230 million) (Publication.pravo.gov, April 3, 2023). The Kremlin leader appointed his niece, Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva,  as head of the fund and instructed her in January 2024 to make psychological rehabilitation of SVO veterans mandatory (Psikhologicheskaia Gazeta, January 26, 2024). 

Such efforts have not allayed the concerns of all observers. Former high-ranking Russian officials have warned about the potential consequences of not fully addressing antisocial and criminal behavior among returning veterans. Earlier this year, former Russian Minister of Internal Affairs and former Deputy Prime Minister General Anatoly Kulikov bluntly acknowledged a potential surge in crime after the end of the SVO. He warned that the Russian authorities need to prepare to neutralize such threats now from demobilized soldiers, contract soldiers, and other combatants, including those recruited from prison. Recounting Soviet history in the first years after the Great Patriotic War, Kulikov pointed out that an increase in “banditry” was witnessed among former military conscripts, and “this is also something that the security forces, the security services, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs need to take into account very carefully to prevent a surge in crime” (Lenta.ru, February 20).

Kulikov’s concerns have seeped into Russia’s political sphere, with discussions in the Duma revolving around how to protect society from returning convict veterans. In February, State Duma Committee on Family, Women, and Children Chair Nina Ostanina observed that the convicts returning from the war zone are not “sufficiently socialized;” consequently, the number of crimes involving them “may increase.” Ostanina added,

At first, these people felt like criminals, culprits, and now they are heroes. And this feeling of the hero will have an effect on their return. It is clear that they are not returning to where they were, they are returning to society. And the period of their social reintegration will be shortened for them.

She concluded by urging law enforcement agencies to take control of the situation and help the returning fighters find employment (Lenta.ru, February 20).

Unsurprisingly, the Russian government prefers to focus on its supposed successes in assisting returning veterans rather than the darker aspects of their social reintegration. In December 2024, Putin instructed the government and the “Defenders of the Fatherland” fund to develop a plan to increase the employment rate of returning combatants. In June 2025, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin reported on the plan’s readiness and success. He presented statistics that, as of May 1, supposedly 57 percent of all demobilized soldiers were already employed. Simultaneously, Sergey Novikov, head of the Presidential Administration’s Public Projects Department, announced that 137,000 SVO participants had returned home (Kommersant, July 11).

Despite Moscow’s rosy picture, persistent and careful research by independent journalists and media outlets has illuminated the true extent of the growing problem. Many psychologists believe that resocialization and adaptation of veterans to civilian life will be some of the main challenges for Russian society after the war’s end. The gun could also be turned on the Kremlin, given the wisdom, or lack thereof, of militarizing convicts with promises of amnesty, arming them and sending them to the frontlines, and then expecting them to become model citizens upon their return. The situation will only be further compounded as Moscow fails to follow through on its promises to veterans and their families. In such a murky environment, the only certainty is that “Defenders of the Fatherland” officials have their work cut out for them.