Paul Goble
Staunton, June 26 – Sergey Novikov, who heads the Kremlin’s social projects directorate, says veterans must make significantly more than the average salary in Russia on their return home. Now, while fighting, they are earning at least 2600 US dollars a month, an amount that is two and a half times greater than the average in Russia.
Speaking to a youth forum this week, the Kremlin official says that the veterans, most of whom are young, “need help with retraining and finding new jobs. But not just any jobs: decent ones. Because right now in the combat zone, they’re earning solid pay … They need to return home in a way that doesn’t cause a drop in household income” (tass.ru/politika/24361151).
But achieving that goal is almost certainly impossible: half of the 140,000 veterans who have come back as of now have not been able to find jobs at all and many suffer from injuries or PTSD (themoscowtimes.com/2025/06/26/nearly-140k-russian-soldiers-back-from-war-are-in-need-of-reintegration-kremlin-says-a89581 ).
Novikov’s words are the clearest indication yet that the Kremlin is worried about what will happen when more veterans return and does not yet have a plan for coping with a situation that gives every sign of being the seedbed for social explosions.
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