Russian Veterans Returning To Impoverished Regions Likely To Have Even More Problems Than Those Returning To Most Non-Russian Republics – OpEd

Putin’s decision to complect his army from impoverished federal subjects ethnic Russian and non-Russian alike and his demand that these subjects bear primary responsibility for veterans means that such regions and republics will bear a disproportionate burden as soldiers return from the war, Tatyana Rybakova says.

These federal subjects will have more returnees and fewer resources to help them, making it likely that crime rates will go up far more in them and in the country as a whole, the Not Moscow Speaksjournalist says (nemoskva.net/2026/02/02/prishel-soldat-s-fronta-est-li-u-vlasti-plan-ego-adaptaczii/).

But she adds that the problems the returning veterans represent are likely to be far higher in impoverished but predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays than they will be in what are often as poor or even poorer non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus and the federal subjects east of the Urals.

Strikingly and perhaps for most unexpectedly, Rybakova continues, “the fewest problems will probably be faced by those veterans from the North Caucasus. As a rule, people from there have a place to return to and fairly large and close-knit circles of relatives” who will try to help them out. 

The chief problem the veterans returning to the North Caucasus will present, she argues, will be women. “On the one hand, traditional societies there are more tolerant of violence against them; and on the other, those returning from the war will mainly have the opportunity to vent their aggression on the women of their families.”

In Buryatia and Tuva, the situation is also likely to be less bad than in oblasts and krays where ethnic Russians form the majority. In those to republics, the journalist says, “a cult of war and the military” still exists, and that means that society will help returning veterans to adapt even if officials lack the funds to help.

The situation in impoverished ethnic Russian oblasts and krays will likely be bad because poverty rates are high and there is little in the way of a tradition for society to help veterans and little money available to the regional governments to take the steps the veterans will need, especially those who have been left handicapped.

Perhaps the worst situation of all will not be in these two types of regions and republics far from Moscow but in megalopolises like the Russian capital to which veterans who can’t get help in their home regions are likely to flee in the hopes of getting help there. Unsurprisingly, the ethnic Russian veterans are more likely to do that than the non-Russian ones.