Putin's Next Battle

Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine could challenge the president by revealing the invasion's true cost

- by BRENDAN COLE

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin has declared 2025 the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland," but the soldiers whose patriotism he wants to champion could pose a threat to his rule when they return from fighting against Ukraine.

That assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, follows moves by the Kremlin that the Washington think tank said aim to stop disgruntled troops challenging state propaganda about the conflict. One security expert told Newsweek that the Kremlin could be threatened by veterans reminding the Russian people of the huge human cost that authorities had hidden.

A Putin critic on Russia's federal wanted list told Newsweek that returning soldiers did not pose an immediate danger to the regime but could fuel a crime wave far worse than seen after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.

Using the euphemism for its aggression in Ukraine, the Kremlin has over the past two years launched the Association of the Special Military Operation, known as the SVO, and the SVO Military Brotherhood. These movements ostensibly supporting and elevating military service are also measures to keep veterans on a leash, the ISW said.

The Kremlin does not want independent civil society groups of veterans to struggle with reintegration due to trauma, the think tank said, noting that Moscow wants to avoid a repeat of the social instability that followed its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, a decade after its invasion.

The ISW said the Kremlin fears a new wave of "Afghan syndrome" in which veterans' groups known as Afghantsi (Russian for Afghans), returned disillusioned at the Soviet government's inability to integrate traumatized veterans into society.