Heroes and villains: Russia braces for eventual return of its enormous army

LONDON (Reuters) -For Russian wife killer Azamat Iskaliyev, the war was a one-way ticket out of jail.

The 37-year-old had served less than a third of a nine-year murder sentence - for stabbing his spouse to death in his car in the summer of 2021 because she wanted a divorce - when he was freed and pardoned by Russia in return for fighting in Ukraine.

The six-month battlefield stint didn't diminish his appetite for violent revenge against women who spurned him.

After returning to civilian life, he knifed an ex-girlfriend more than 60 times in the shop where she worked in October last year after she rejected his advances. In July, he was jailed for more than 19 years for the frenzied murder.

Iskaliyev's case, pieced together from court records in the city of Saratov and local media reports from his hearings, is a shocking example of the social problems that could await Russia as hundreds of thousands of soldiers - some of them pardoned convicts - return home following an eventual end to the war.

"All told, perhaps over 1.5 million Russian men and women had participated in the war as of the start of 2025," said Mark Galeotti, a British expert on Russia and author of a report on Moscow's demobilisation challenges for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

"As more and more of them begin to be demobilised and return home, Russia will see an influx of veterans ... bearing the psychological impacts of war."

Such concerns go all the way to the top, with President Vladimir Putin viewing the prospect of an army returning en masse as a potential risk he wants carefully managed to avoid destabilising society and the political system he has built, three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters.

The aim, one of the sources said, is to avoid a repeat of the social ructions that followed the end of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, when returning veterans helped fuel a wave of organised crime that blighted the 1990s.

Many of those returning to civilian life will never earn anything like the generous salaries they now receive, which will create discontent, the same source said. An army recruit from Moscow, for example, can now make at least 5.2 million roubles ($65,000) in their first year in Ukraine, including an upfront signing-up bonus of 1.9 million roubles ($24,000) which alone is nearly as much as the average annual salary in the capital.

The Kremlin, Russian Defence Ministry and Ministry of Justice didn't respond to requests for comment on the risks posed by troops returning from Ukraine.

Iskaliyev, who pleaded guilty to both murders and is serving his second sentence in a maximum security penal colony, could not be reached by Reuters.

The challenges of managing returning veterans aren't unique to Russia. A "substantial minority" of the roughly 2.7 million Americans who served in Vietnam, for example, suffered psychological and life-adjustment problems, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

A key difference about the war in Ukraine from many conflicts though is that both sides have deployed convicts on the battlefield.

Data from the Russian prison service and Ukraine's intelligence services suggest that Russia has recruited 120,000-180,000 convicts to fight in Ukraine since 2022.

Those soldiers who have come home so far have mainly been convicts, those who have been badly wounded, or others deemed too old to fight. But most of the army - Putin has said almost 700,000 troops are fighting in Ukraine - are still there.

The defence ministry no longer releases convicts like Iskaliyev back into society after six months in Ukraine, having changed the rules in 2023, with officials saying it was unfair that criminals received better terms than ordinary volunteers. Now, like regular recruits who sign a contract, they must keep fighting until the war is over.

CIVILIANS KILLED BY VETERANS

Verstka, an independent Russian media outlet, calculated in October last year that almost 500 civilians had become victims of veterans returning from fighting in Ukraine.

Using open-source data on military crimes from media reports and Russian court records, the organisation said at least 242 people had been killed and another 227 gravely injured.

Reuters could not independently confirm those figures.

Russian authorities designated Verstka, whose publisher is based in Prague, a foreign agent in December 2023. They said the outlet opposed Moscow's military operations in Ukraine and distributed unreliable information about Russian policies, allegations rejected by Verstka which says it rigorously checks facts and does not publish anything it is not 100% sure about.

A second of the sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters the government feared the impact a mass veteran return might have on the country's tightly controlled political system.

Putin has already had a dangerous taste of the chaos that the forces he unleashed in Ukraine are capable of at home, when Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny against the army's top brass in June 2023.

The third source said the Kremlin, at Putin's behest, had been working to manage potential problems with a slew of policies, programmes and appointments including helping veterans take part in regional elections last year and putting them forward for federal parliamentary elections next year.

Putin, who has said that "warriors" who fought in Ukraine are part of the "genuine elite," has promised veterans prestigious careers and has taken a personal interest in an elite training programme called "The Time of Heroes" to prepare them for civilian leadership.

One veteran, a decorated tank commander called Artur Orlov, has been put in charge of the president's Soviet-style youth movement "Movement of the First". Another, former battalion commander Artyom Zhoga, was appointed as Putin's special representative in the vast Urals region.

Four other veterans have been given jobs in the presidential administration, at least three have seats in the upper house of parliament, while others have been given jobs in different branches of regional government.

In a Kremlin meeting with some of the participants in June, Putin explained the rationale - which he described as his "deep belief" - behind this plan.

"The people who made the conscious decision to serve the Motherland, and thereby achieve personal success, should gradually occupy certain positions," he said.

AFGANTSY & UKRAINTSY

Opinions vary on the validity of comparisons to the 1990s when returning veterans dubbed "Afgantsy", many suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and some leaning on drugs and alcohol to get by, struggled to reintegrate and helped drive up crime.

Zhoga, whose son was killed in Ukraine, has said that veterans of Ukraine - who are already being referred to as "Ukraintsy" - will avoid the problems that bedevilled Afghan veterans because of the state's efforts.

This view was shared by the third source close to the Kremlin, who said the end of the Afghan war in 1989 had been followed two years later by the collapse of the Soviet Union, creating a power and security vacuum ripe for chaos. Today is different because the political system and law enforcement are stronger, said the source, who acknowledged convicts were a special category that naturally posed a higher risk.

Yet others argue that returning Ukraine veterans could pose a more serious problem than the Afgantsy.

Gregory Feifer, author of "The Great Gamble", a book about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, told Reuters the war in Ukraine had become a much bloodier conflict than Afghanistan, where the official Soviet death toll was around 15,000.

"The numbers now are far, far greater," said Feifer, executive director of the Institute of Current World Affairs in Washington. "We're talking about a much more bitter conflict."

Galeotti, the author of the report on demobilisation challenges, said he didn't think the problems of returning veterans would reach "the pitch of the wild 90s".

"But given that there are so many more 'Ukraintsy' proportionate to the population than 'Afgantsy', I do fear a real time of troubles."

(Reporting by Reuters reportersEditing by Pravin Char)