Paul Goble
Staunton, June 29 – More than half of the 1300 veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine who have been given government jobs had those or other government positions before they went to fight, according to a Meduza portal investigation, a pattern that calls into question Putin’s claim that his plan to make veterans a truly new elite.
This reflects the fact that many left government positions to fight in Ukraine to curry favor with the Kremlin, but it means that this new Russian elite is far less new that Putin and his regime assert and that many observers accept as true (meduza.io/feature/2026/06/29/novaya-rossiyskaya-elita).
The portal concedes that there almost certainly are more veterans now in the government because in many cases, individuals taking new positions do not list whether they are veterans or not. But the percentage it does report is indicative of the way that the veterans who are getting government jobs are not the complete outsiders many assume Putin intended.
Meduza says there are three basic avenues for those veterans who do get government jobs: the Time of Heroes program and its regional analogues which select from among veterans for appointments, participation in elections mostly at the local and regional level, and returning to the same job or a better one after fighting in Ukraine.
The study provides a wealth of data about veterans who join the government, but beyond question its most important finding is that the third category, those who had been working in the Russian government before fighting in Ukraine and then returning to such service afterwards, is far larger than most had assumed.
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