Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 18 – Putin says he wants veterans of his war in Ukraine to be at the core of a new Russian elite and has set up a special program to achieve that end. But even as he has done so, his staff are expressing “fears the appearance of genuinely popular veterans,” those with knowledge of the process say.
That is because as history shows and as Vyorstka is reporting, veterans with charisma and ambition can threaten those in power, but weeding them out as Putin proposes to do is likely to make even more of them magnets around which opposition groups can coalesce (verstka.media/kak-kreml-delaet-vid-chto-vyrashhivaet-novyh-liderov-iz-veteranov-no-boitsya-deistvitelno-populyarnyh-voennyh).
The news service has spoken with people closely involved with Putin’s veterans program who testify that what the Kremlin leader wants are obedience cogs who do little to attract attention to themselves and thus do not challenge the existing power structures as commanders like Aleksandr Lebed, Lev Rokhlin, and Yevgeny Prigozhin did.
Once Putin’s intentions in this regard become clear, few veterans are going to want to sign up for positions in which they will serve as little more than window dressing for the Putin regime. More than that, many other Russians will see this to – and those veterans whom the Kremlin excludes from its program may end by playing exactly the opposite role he intends.
What appears to be especially concerning to people in the Kremlin is the possibility that the mass return of veterans from Ukraine will thus not only trigger a crime wave as many now expect but that it will open the way for some military figures to speak out for veterans and thus really become a new Russian elite.
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