Vladimir Putin’s Enemy from Within – New Statesman

In recent days, videos of Russian conscripts surrendering to Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region have been circulating on Western social media platforms. Kiev claims to have captured hundreds of conscripts defending the border as its army pushes deep into Russian territory. For the first time in the war against Ukraine – and the first time since the Chechen conflict two decades ago – large numbers of Russian conscripts are being tested in combat.

Early evidence suggests that these under-equipped and under-trained young men are unwilling to fight a more experienced opponent. Yet their sudden exposure to frontline warfare could pose a much bigger problem for Vladimir Putin’s Russia than small tactical defeats: a large group of vengeful, violent citizens who feel betrayed by the current leadership.

Every Russian male between the ages of 18 and 30 is theoretically required to complete a year of military service, a system that has existed with minor modifications since the Soviet era. Nevertheless, a social contract is designed to protect the conscript’s life (unlike that of Russia’s professional soldiers, who have died in their thousands since the invasion of Ukraine). Draft evasion is practically an art form in Russia, while exclusions for medical reasons, higher education enrolment and a host of other reasons also apply. If these avenues fail to keep the children of concerned parents – or potential conscripts who object on ideological grounds – out of the armed forces, bribery is a common alternative.

Conscripts do not expect to be in active combat. They usually spend their time doing busy work: training on the parade ground, administrative tasks, tending equipment, or manning remote border posts. Russian law prohibits the use of conscripts abroad. Putin has repeatedly promised that conscripts would not be called up to fight in Ukraine. contracts – the contract soldiers who accept the state’s offers of life-changing sums of money to fight the real battle in Ukraine – the troops who were expected to risk their lives. Despite the scale of the casualties and the mobilization of reservists in September 2022, which briefly dented the president’s popularity, conscripts, by contrast, until a few weeks ago expected to serve out their 12-month service in relative safety.

Now, however, Ukraine has brought the war to Russian soil—and to Putin’s conscripts—with the invasion of Kursk. Unless Moscow can quickly expel Ukrainian troops, thousands more will soon find themselves in the fighting. And exposed to the horrors of combat and enraged at the society that sent them there, many will return to civilian life with a violent grievance.

Russian history shows what happens when the Kremlin sends mentally and militarily unprepared conscripts to war. Forty-five years ago, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In the decade of fighting that followed, what should have been an easy victory in a “defensive” war—the comparisons to today’s conflict are all too clear—turned into a humiliating defeat. Some 700,000 soldiers—most of them conscripts—were sent from across the Soviet Union to fight. Despite the war’s slow progress, they were promised that they would become socialist heroes, just as their fathers had been after World War II. According to state propaganda, these young men would be given positions of power and privilege in return for their sacrifices.

The war, like today’s, was marked by extraordinary, lawless violence and devastatingly high casualties. By the time the last Moscow soldiers left Afghanistan in 1989, 15,000 Soviets were dead. The steady stream of bodies returning to Soviet cities in the 1980s played a major role in undermining support for the ailing regime. Groups of soldiers’ mothers used the freedoms of glasnost to lobby for protection of their sons. In 1989, few believed in the military mission of the state.

At the same time, the promise that these young men would reap the fruits of the war was broken. As the fever of social reform swept through the new Russian Federation in the 1990s, afghansas the veterans of the war were called, were forgotten. In the absence of trauma care, social services, and the respect veterans once received, resentment and anger became the norm. The afghans formed “military-patriotic clubs,” where the politics of resentment quickly turned into violent ultranationalism. They spread across the former Soviet space, finding outlets for violence in wars abroad, in Chechnya—and at home, in the criminal gangs that dominated Russian life in the 1990s.

The listless rage of the afghans lingered for years. Under Putin, however, they were soon invited back into the political center. Once again hailed as heroes, finally rewarded with medals, and welcomed into the celebration of military masculinity that has marked the Russian leader’s years in power, the afghans are now privileged members of society. On average, these sixty-somethings are likely to be strong supporters of the war against Ukraine (the state has even encouraged them to use their experience as “violence specialists” as contract soldiers). But while Putin knows how to use the violent habits of disaffected soldiers to his advantage, he may be on the verge of creating his own brand of disruptive, disaffected soldiers. afghans from the ruins of the war in Ukraine. Given the scale of the manpower already deployed in Ukraine – there are currently nearly half a million Russian troops stationed in the country – the problem may be even greater than that of the 1990s.

Unlike the contract soldiers who choose to fight in Ukraine, the conscripts now being thrown into the battle in Kursk have little to gain from the war. The promises of heroism that come from sacrifice in war are geared toward volunteers. Those who have signed up for the fight are hailed as heroes everywhere, from school classes to light entertainment shows to church pulpits. The conscripts who did not expect to fight are excluded from this morale-building work; their eventual return to civilian life could pose an insoluble problem for Putin, as their sense of betrayal is channeled into disruption at home.

The state is trying to stay ahead of the problem. On social media popular among young Russians, official media, paid influencers, and sympathetic patriots are spreading rumors that conscripts at the front could receive higher pay. Unverified stories about conscripts being rescued from encirclement by experienced Russian troops are spreading virally. Meanwhile, videos depicting conscripts as prisoners of war are being removed from Kremlin-controlled networks as quickly as possible. The bitter pill of unexpected battles is being softened.

The state is also trying to show that it is actively listening to the concerns of conscripts and their families—unlike in Afghanistan, where young men thousands of miles from the motherland were cut off from filing complaints with authorities and their loved ones. On the popular social networks Telegram and VK, for example, military units are creating their own feeds and groups where conscripts and their parents can get their questions about conditions answered (albeit perhaps not entirely honestly) and like-minded citizens to share their concerns with (albeit in a space that the authorities can monitor).

The state’s attempts to prevent a repeat of the growing resentment over Afghanistan and the subsequent Chechen wars have also led to the creation of a series of fake support groups for soldiers’ mothers. The Russian Council-Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, which has 120,000 followers on the popular VK platform, celebrated national “Officers’ Day” as conscripts surrendered to Ukrainian troops, spread a fake news story about Volodymyr Zelensky planning to flee Ukraine, and shared information about bonuses at the front. Special spaces offer mothers and wives the opportunity to ask questions. It is apparently led by two ordinary Russian women.

Despite appearances, the state is not listening to its soldiers. The group is a product of the Kremlin, designed to assuage fears about the fate of both. contracts and conscripts: its address is even listed as “1, Red Square,” and it has only been around for a few years. Still, a concerned Russian soldier or mother could be forgiven for confusing the group with the similarly named Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, an NGO that has supported soldiers since 1989 but whose work has been curtailed by government threats.

There are countless fake support groups, all trying to show that the state is listening. The media publish stories promising that state officials are investigating the disappearance of conscripts during the war. When Putin met with a group of soldiers’ mothers in the Kremlin in November 2022, he claimed that “unity is the main key to our success.” But now that his regime’s promises to keep conscripts out of the war have been broken, unity may be hard to maintain.

The Kremlin’s response amounts to little more than a lame PR strategy. The facade of Potemkin support for young conscripts caught up in the violence – in reality, Putin’s regime does not pay them big bonuses, does not listen to their families, and does not provide psychological care to those returning from the front – could leave the president in a nightmare scenario.

In a country where returning troops are increasingly committing violence, betrayed conscripts may follow not in the footsteps of the heroes they see in state films about World War II, but in those of the Afghan generation. If the state fails to respond to their concerns, and if the general public at some point in the future tries to forget the brutal war against Ukraine, these men may find themselves on the fringes of society. If so, their experiences of betrayal and disappointment may lead them to bring even more violence to the Russian Federation—and threaten the national stability that Vladimir Putin has long made the bedrock of his rule.

(See also: Who wins now?)