Russia rewards its war veterans with a taste of politics

They lead party tickets, star in campaign videos and appear in televised debates. They are Russians who have fought in Ukraine, and they feature prominently in this week’s parliamentary election.

Election officials say nearly 200 candidates have served in Ukraine, and the Kremlin touts them as part of Russia’s “true elite” – its effort to show that veterans of the 4 1/2-year-old war will have an honoured place in civilian life. But few analysts believe that most of them will ever hold any real power among the country’s ruling class, dismissing the effort as a way to lure more volunteers to fight.

Independent Russian media regularly report about returning veterans involved in assaults, drunken brawls and even killings. Some of those crimes were committed by men who were recruited into the military from prison. The vote that begins on Friday for the State Duma – the lower house of parliament – is the first since the war began, and also will take place in areas of Ukraine that Russia captured and illegally annexed. The Kremlin is tightly managing the election, seeking to reinforce its narrative of widespread support for the war and provide a veneer of legitimacy for its actions.

Most of the Kremlin-aligned parties allowed on the ballot have candidates identified as participants in the SVO – the Russian acronym for its “special military operation” in Ukraine. One prominent candidate is Vladislav Golovin, 29, of the ruling United Russia party, who fought in the battle for the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and lost part of his leg. He has appeared at events with President Vladimir Putin, who made him a Hero of Russia, the country’s highest honor.

In 2024, Golovin took part in Putin’s “Time of Heroes” program that prepares veterans for government careers. He now heads a military and patriotic youth organization, the Young Army – but also has been put on Western sanctions lists. United Russia has several dozen candidates with a Ukraine war background. Another of its leading candidates is Yevgeny Poddubny, a well-connected state TV war correspondent who was wounded by a Ukrainian drone.

The ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party has a top candidate in Alexei Vereshchagin, who is described as having joined the Moscow-backed separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and leading a brigade of volunteers. “We are the ones our homeland has called upon to fight for the ‘Russian World,’ and we will fight,” Vereshchagin, who was born in Kyiv, said in a campaign video, using a term popularized by Putin, especially after Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.

Ukrainian police in March posted a photo of what appeared to be Vereshchagin and said they were investigating him for his role in home invasions and threatening civilians in the Kyiv region in 2022 before Ukrainian forces retook the area. They said he fought against Ukraine for over a decade. He hasn’t publicly commented on the allegations.

By promoting veterans in the State Duma campaign, the Kremlin wants to show potential recruits that they would be fighting “for some higher cause, and that they have bright prospects ahead of them in the form of a career lift,” said Nikolay Petrov, senior research fellow at the NEST Centre, founded by exiled Russian tycoon and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. But Russia also “doesn’t know what to do” with those returning from the battlefield, Petrov told The Associated Press, and so it offers them largely insignificant positions with little real power, while focusing on promoting those who already held public office. Former Putin speechwriter-turned-political analyst Abbas Gallyamov was more blunt, calling it “empty talk.”

To lure more men into enlisting, “you need to promise them everything they want to hear, from promises of payments to flattery and stories of their special greatness, their contribution to the cause of building a new Russia,” Gallyamov told AP. The postwar path is not simple for many veterans. Most of those who signed military contracts cannot terminate them under Putin’s 2022 “partial mobilization” decree, and those who were drafted that year have not yet been demobilised, either.

Those who are severely injured or have reached a certain age can be discharged, and some special units reportedly offer limited tours of duty. About 167,000 servicemen have returned from Ukraine, presidential administration official Sergei Novikov said in December, although Russian media reports and experts say the number is probably higher. The competition for the Time of Heroes program is fierce and requires higher education and management experience. Out of over 65,000 applicants in 2024-25, only 168 were accepted, according to its website. Of them, some 80 were appointed to various positions on national, regional or municipal levels.

The independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported in June that at least 1,300 veterans have been appointed to government posts, were elected to local legislatures and councils, or got jobs in state-backed companies or institutions. About 850 of those had some kind of government or related experience before serving, Meduza said, concluding that most beneficiaries were already part of the ruling class.

Associated Press