Paul Goble
Staunton, June 20 – Many Russian commentators have expressed fears that veterans returning from Putin’s war in Ukraine will resemble but be even more numerous than the Afgantsy were in the 1990s, especially because the Kremlin has recruited criminals to serve there (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/history-of-afghantsy-being-replicated.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/kremlin-unwittingly-creating-veterans.html).
Up to now, however, the Russian authorities have treated these veterans with kid gloves, presented them as the new elite, and even sought to make it easier for former convicts to own guns (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/duma-deputies-seek-to-loosen-russian.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-courts-giving-lighter-sentences.html).
But now, after a series of gruesome crimes including murder and rape, some officials are expressing alarm; and the KPRF’s Nina Ostanina, who chairs the Duma’s Committee on Defense of the Family, is calling for action because “these people represent a danger to society” (gazeta.ru/social/news/2024/06/19/23279755.shtml and meduza.io/news/2024/06/19/eti-lyudi-predstavlyayut-opasnost-dlya-obschestva-deputat-gosdumy-nina-ostanina-prizvala-zaschitit-rossiyan-ot-byvshih-zaklyuchennyh-kotorye-vozvraschayutsya-s-voyny).
She says that officials must take special measures to defend Russia against former convicts who are now being feted as heroes but who a coming back to their former homes and committing new crimes and has called for the adoption of special laws to prevent them from wreaking a wave of terror on Russian society.
Because Putin has presented such veterans as important components of the new elite that he sees the war creating, Ostanina's proposal for new legislation is unlikely to go anywhere. But the fact that she has raised this issue in the way that she has may make even Kremlin loyalists more concerned about ensuring that such veterans will be harshly punished if they do commit new crimes.
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