Paul Goble
Staunton, July 15 – Independent observers both inside the Russian Federation and abroad have long pointed to data about crime in the Russian Federation to argue that veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine are behind the rise in crime and especially violent crime in the period since their return and that as their numbers go up so will crime.
But Russian officials and most Russian experts have played down this link arguing instead that the social problems that typically lead to crime are behind any increase and that the veterans, whom Putin wants to make the new “heroes of Russia” are not responsible for any rise in criminality and should not be blamed.
Now, however, in an indication of just how serious a role the veterans are playing in the rise in crime in Russia, Villiy Maslov, a professor at the Interior Ministry’s Urals Law Institute in Yekaterinburg, argues that Putin’s “special military operation” has driven up crime and that its continuation “will inevitably exacerbate crime problems in the future.”
Maslov’s conclusions, based on Russian government statistics, are presented in a new article by him (“The Impact of the Special Military Operation on Crime in Russia,” Lex russica 78(3) (2025) :98-119 at lexrussica.msal.ru/jour/article/view/4313/1621) and have been discussed by the BBC’s Russian Service and Meduza (bbc.com/russian/articles/cly2p4gzd50o and meduza.io/feature/2025/07/15/sotrudnik-instituta-mvd-napisal-statyu-o-tom-kak-voyna-vliyaet-na-prestupnost-v-rossii).
The Yekaterinburg interior ministry expert has already been challenged by some Russian scholars, but the fact that his article appeared at all and in a prestigious journal highlights what many have long suspected: returning veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine may prove to be an even bigger problem for Russia than the war itself has.
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