Kremlin Policies Ensure Veterans Returning from Putin’s War will Be a Far Larger Problem than the Afgantsy were a Generation Ago, Russian Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 27 – The Kremlin’s own policies regarding the Russian military in Ukraine and the handling of veterans of that conflict on their return home ensure that the veterans from Putin’s war will be a far larger problem than the Afgantsy were a generation ago, according to leading Russian specialists.

            Three of these are especially important, these experts believe. First of all, Moscow not only made service there all about money but recruited heavily from Russian prisons to fill the ranks, guaranteeing that criminal values and an obsession with cash will dominate the veterans (dw.com/ru/boevye-bratstva-veterany-svo-organizuutsa-v-opg/a-76571419).

            Second, Moscow has made it virtually impossible for employers to fire any veterans they do hire, a policy that is backfiring because most employers don’t want the problems that presents and thus aren’t hiring veterans in the first place, forcing an even larger percentage of them into or back into a life of crime.

            And third, Moscow must deal with the fact that few veterans fear new jail terms for any crimes they do commit, confident that they can always volunteer again to fight in Ukraine or in some other war Putin may start and see their sentences for any crimes commuted or even cancelled altogether.

            All these factors, not to mention the way in which the Kremlin is promoting veterans as the new elite and giving them special privileges such as priority entrance into higher educational institutions is deepening the divide between veterans and non-veterans and leading the former to look at the latter as their enemies and appropriate targets for attack.

            The Russian experts Deutsche Welle spoke with believe that this will lead Moscow to avoid allowing any single mass return of veterans lest that lead to an explosion. Instead, the Kremlin will likely try to organize the return of some while keeping others in the field either in Ukraine or in some other military action elsewhere.

            And to the extent that is so, Moscow’s growing fears about the impact of the returning veterans on Russian social and political society could quickly become a reason that the Putin regime will choose new targets for the use of its forces abroad – lest veterans of his war in Ukraine threaten Russia and himself.

Once Large and Active Ukrainian Diaspora in Russia Currently ‘Lost to Ukraine,’ Former Kyiv Diplomat Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 22 – Since 2010, Moscow has worked to suppress or take full control over all organizations in Russia involving Ukrainians as part of its effort to force members of that community to give up their language and identity or face the near certainty of repression and the inability to get and keep good jobs, a former Ukrainian diplomat who worked in Russia says.

            Speaking to Radio Liberty on condition of anonymity, he says that as a result of these Moscow actions, “the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia is lost for Ukraine” however much Kyiv might like to change that (svoboda.org/a/ukraintsam-opasno-vyskazyvatjsya-otkryto-ukrainskaya-diaspora-v-rossii/33711715.html).

            Moscow began by targeting organizations involved in political or even public life, banning their operation, driving activists into emigration, or in some cases even killing their leaders – and then replacing them with “puppet” groups that the FSB totally controlled even though they retained references to Ukrainians in their names.

            The survivors are now typically led by retired military officers who came from Ukraine in Soviet times, served in the Red Army, and then retired in the Russian Federation. They appear sufficiently Ukrainian to fool some in Russia as well as many in Ukraine and in western countries.

            But the greatest pressure against ethnic Ukrainians inside the Russian Federation came in 2018-2019, the diplomat says. At that time, many ethnic Ukrainians were informed that they would lose their jobs or at least any chance for advancement unless they gave up their Ukrainian citizenship and became ethnic Russians.

            Many of these people lined up at Ukrainian consulates to take the necessary steps, thus allowing Moscow to claim on the basis of the census in 2020-21 that the number of Ukrainians in Russia had fallen by more than half in the last decade, although it is likely many avoided identifying as Russians but were among the 11 percent not declaring a nationality at all.

            Irina Klyuchkovskaya, the director of Lviv’s International Institute of Education, Culture and Ties with the Diaspora, provides additional information on the trends the anonymous diplomat has talked about. She says that the Russian authorities have been successful in suppressing organized life of the Ukrainians inside Russia and of their use of Ukrainian.

            Russian oppression of ethnic Ukrainians, including in some cases the murder of their leaders, was “a test for the reaction both in Russia and in Ukraine and in the world,” she suggests. There wasn’t much of a reaction in any of these places, in part because Ukrainian organizations had ceased to trust one another given the FSB’s control of so many.

            The current situation of ethnic Ukrainians in Putin’s Russia is dire, but it isn’t necessarily irreversible. Many Ukrainians within the current borders of the Russian Federation retain a cultural identity even if they no longer speak their native language. If conditions in Russia change as a result of the war, the Ukrainian community in Russia almost certainly

Returning Ethnic Kazakhs Rather than Arriving or Departing Ethnic Russians Dominated Kazakhstan’s Migration Flows in 2025, Astana Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – In 2025, 23,700 people moved to Kazakhstan from other countries while only 7600 left, according to Kazakhstan’s Bureau of National Statistics. More than half of those arriving were ethnic Kazakhs (12,900) while smaller numbers of Karakalpaks (1800) and Uzbeks (1700) were involved.

            As far as ethnic Russians are concerned, 3400 came to Kazakhstan for permanent residence while 4300 left, a major change from earlier decades. And ethnic Germans, another nation whose members left in large numbers, declined to 993 (spik.kz/2583-vneshnjaja-migracija-pogodu-delajut-kandasy-a-rossijskij-faktor-obnuljaetsja.html).

            This shift in which Kazakhs from abroad (the so-called Oralmane or Kandasy) set the weather by coming back rather than Russians and Germans represents a major change from the past, and it is a trend that the Kazakhstan government has tried to regulate more closely while opposition groups have called for an even more welcoming approach.

            According to Astana, 62,4 percent of the ethnic Kazakhs returning from abroad were from Uzbekistan last year, 20 percent were from China, 6.5 percent were from Turkmenistan, 5.1 percent were from Russia, 3.5 percent were from Mongolia, and 2.5 percent from all other countries combined.

            Both the arrival of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad and the declining departures of ethnic Russians and ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan reflect the ethnic sorting out that has been taking place across the former Soviet space. Most Russians and Germans who were in Kazakhstan earlier have left, and many Kazakhs living abroad are now returning.

            And what this means, of course, is the reintegration of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad is now a larger problem for Kazakhstan’s government and society than coping with the departure of ethnic Russians, however much it remains the case that outflows of the latter continue to attract more attention at least outside of Kazakhstan.

For First Time Since 1998, More than Half of Russians Don’t Attend Orthodox Church Services, Levada Center Poll Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 24 – For the first time since 1998, a majority (55 percent) of Russians say they don’t attend Orthodox Church services; and only 16 percent say they participate in such services several times a month, a Levada Center survey finds, a remarkable decline and one likely attributable to the Moscow Patriarchate’s servile support for Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            Sixty percent of men, 69 percent of people younger than 25, 59 percent with less education, people living in mid-sized cities, 62 percent of workers, and 71 percent of students don’t attend church at all; while 51 percent of women, 51 percent of those over 55, 61 percent of Muscovites, and higher shares of educated and well off do (levada.ru/2026/03/24/poseshhenie-religioznyh-sluzhb-v-fevrale-2026-goda/).

            Wars typically lead to an increase in church attendance as people try to make sense of what is going on; but in the case of the ROC MP, the reverse appears to be happening, largely because it appears the jingoism and the militarism of most but far from all priests and hierarchs is off-putting.

            Thus, yet another victim of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine may be the Moscow Patriarchate which he clearly views as one of his most important allies. The Levada Center survey did not explore how those no longer attending Orthodox services are finding spiritual solace, but it is likely that at least some are turning to other denominations.

Fewer from Abroad are Taking Russian Citizenship Now and More who Do So are Migrant Workers from Central Asia, Further Reducing Ethnic Russian Share of Country’s Population

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 24 – The number of people from abroad taking Russian citizenship has dropped from 691,000 in 2022 to 152,400 last year, Russian government statistics show; and a growing percentage of those who continue to do so are not ethnic Russians returning to their homeland but non-Russian migrants from Central Asia trying to protect their families.

            Prior to the beginning of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Moscow promoted the return of what it calls “compatriots” to their homeland, and it used these returnees to hide the demographic decline of its own population (nemoskva.net/2026/03/23/menshe-grazhdan-bolshe-shtrafov-interes-inostranczev-k-rossijskomu-grazhdanstvu-stremitelno-snizhaetsya/).

            Because most of these 600,000 to 700,000 people a year were ethnic Russians or at least Slavic, Moscow was also able to claim that the share of ethnic Russians in the population had not declined but if anything increased, something that pleased both the Kremlin and the increasing number of Russian nationalists in the population.

            But with the onset of the war in Ukraine, this source of immigration has rapidly declined both overall and in terms of its ethnic content.  According to Pavel Pryanikov, who edits the Tolkovatel telegram channel, ever more of those claiming Russian citizenship are not ethnic Russians but Muslims from Central Asia (svpressa.ru/society/news/508033/).

            That has happened, he suggests, because Moscow’s ever harsher policies toward migrants have made some of their number decide that the best course for themselves and their families is to take Russian citizenship. That has kept the number of people taking Russian citizenship from declining still further, but now that number includes many non-Russians as well.

            As a result, Russian statisticians will find it more difficult to continue to hide the obvious: the population of the Russian Federation is not only declining overall but the share of the ethnic Russian part of that population is declining as well – while the share of that population which is non-Russian is increasing, at least in part because of the Kremlin’s own policies.

 

Kremlin has Been Closing Psychiatric Clinics Even Though More than 20 Percent of Ukrainian War Veterans Need Treatment, Doctor Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 23 – Vladimir Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program, a euphemism for the closing of medical facilities across the country, has created a situation in which the Russian government does not have anything like the number of such facilities it needs for the rehabilitation of veterans of the war in Ukraine, Sergey Vetoshkin says.

            In Moscow alone, the psychiatrist says, the Putin regime has already shuttered 14 of the 17 psychiatric clinics which were open there before he seized Ukraine’s Crimea, creating in their place small “memory clinics” that are not capable of addressing the needs of the population there let alone the returning veterans (svpressa.ru/health/article/507734/).

            Given the estimated 20 percent of all veterans of the war who will need treatment, Vetoshkin says, there is no chance that they will get the support they need; and thus their problems will become the problems of Russian society as a whole, problems far greater than the veterans of the Afghan war (“the Afgantsy”) presented at the end of Soviet times.

Putin Using Notion of ‘Genocide of Soviet People’ to Present Russians as ‘a Messianic Nation' and Justify Rebuilding Empire, Khapayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – “The concept of ‘the genocide of the Soviet people’” is allowing Putin to portray that group “as a messianic nation, simultaneously both victor and victim” and to use that as a basis to argue that “the messianic sacrifice of one’s ancestors grants their descendants the exclusive right to determine the global political order, Dina Khapayeva says.

            As part of this claim, a Russian historian now at the University of Helsinki says, Moscow says “throughout history, Russia has sacrificed itself for the sake of humanity” and “finally saved civilization by defeating fascism,” leaving the door open “for all kinds of policies and above all attempts to restore the empire” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/25/dyrokol-dlia-pamiati). 

            In a lengthy article, which deserves a more detailed summary than can be given here, Khapayeva provides a number of key arguments and even specific facts which in most cases have not received the attention they deserve or the discussion among Russians and students of Russia they merit.

            Among the most important of these are the following:

·       This effort is at odds with the definition of genocide provided by the UN in 1948. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were not killed because of their ethnicity but because of their actions. On the territory of the USSR, other groups like Jews, Roma, and those with mental illness were; but not the main components of “the Soviet people.”

·       Putin came to power without a clear ideology and fastened on the Soviet victory in World War II and Soviet losses there, using those historical events as Stalinists had before, as universal moral solvent to defend Stalin and to obscure the Soviet dictator’s crimes.

·       Putin began his operation to create “an artificial national amnesia” about the Stalinist past at the start of his time as president and this effort is now “entering its final stages” with the destruction of the Gulag Museum and the promotion of the concept of the Soviet people as a victim of a genocide. 90 of the 110 monuments to Stalin in Russia were erected in Putin’s time.

·       What Putin is doing also has its roots in the hypocritical position of Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign which was not only partial but set the stage for discussions about what could be restored as opposed to what must not be.

·       Directly connected to the idea of “the genocide of the Soviet people” is “a new Orthodox post-Soviet aspect of re-Stalinization, the struggle for the canonization of Stalin,” something Putin has given a new impulse to by his talk about genocide.