By Sultan Musayev | 2025-07-29

They were convicted murderers, rapists and armed robbers: men who should have been serving years, if not decades, behind bars. Instead, Russia handed them rifles, sent them to the front lines in Ukraine and hailed them as heroes.

Now, many of them are back. And the violence has not stopped.

A growing body of research inside Russia is sounding the alarm over a surge in crime tied to pardoned convicts who fought in what the Kremlin still calls a "special military operation" (SMO).

One of the most sobering assessments comes from Villi Maslov, a researcher at the Ural Law Institute of the Russian Interior Ministry (MVD), who said that Russia is already paying the domestic price for its wartime gamble.

Maslov's analysis, published in March in the scholarly journal Lex russica, paints a stark picture: traumatized veterans, trained to kill and praised for it, returning to civilian life with few guardrails. Some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Others have simply internalized violence as a new normal. And many, he wrote, are turning again to crime, bringing battlefield brutality to cities and villages alike.

Secrecy compounds the problem. Presidential pardons of prisoners are classified, making it nearly impossible to know how many violent offenders the country's prisons have disgorged. But the number might have reached tens of thousands during just the first year of the war, estimated Maslov.

The veterans' crimes since coming home now range from traffic violations to homicide. And with Russia's internal security forces stretched thin and priorities shifted to the war abroad, Maslov said the trend is likely to worsen.

A paycheck, then prison

Upon their return home, many of the fighters are turning to crime, driven by disillusionment and the lure of easy money, research shows.

High wartime pay has skewed expectations, said Maslov. In 2024, servicemen received a one-time bonus of 400,000 RUB (about $4,300), followed by monthly salaries of more than 200,000 RUB (roughly $2,150). In just one year at the front, if they lived, they could match five or six years of average earnings.

"Upon returning from military service, these individuals are unlikely to want to take jobs where they will again receive less money," wrote Maslov, citing the increased number of robbery convictions of SMO veterans.

"Especially alarming is the fact that these individuals have acquired military skills that... are in demand in the criminal world."

Ex-cons sent to war are "practically incapable of reintegrating into society" and a return to crime is "only a matter of time," said Maslov.

Some civilians report rising violence on the streets. Ulan Omorov, a supermarket manager in Moscow originally from Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, said a friend from Tashkent was recently beaten by drunken men angry that he was not fighting in Ukraine. One attacker, a self-identified veteran of the invasion, stole his wallet.

Such men "behave brazenly and aggressively," picking fights and disregarding law enforcement, he told Kontur.

"SMO veterans behave lawlessly and do not fear the police," he said.

Consequences beyond the battlefield

Official data reflect a sharp rise in crime tied to the war. According to Russia's Supreme Court, criminal convictions of military personnel quadrupled between 2020 and 2024, jumping from 3,248 to 13,674.

Courts increasingly often are convicting servicemen of murder, grievous bodily harm and sexual violence, RTVI reported in April. The number of sexual crimes committed by military personnel more than doubled during that period.

Domestic disputes involving veterans are fueling violent crime too.

In one case from October, a 51-year-old SMO veteran fatally stabbed his neighbor, who had complained the veteran was playing music too loudly. In another case last November, a 31-year-old ex-con who fought in Ukraine killed two drinking companions, stabbing one 68 times and the other 66 times. He then set fire to the apartment where they had been drinking to destroy the evidence.

A sense of impunity and of moral detachment drives the aggression, say psychologists.

"Ex-cons return from war embittered. They have even less chance of reintegrating into society than in peacetime," Aygerim Ibragimova, a psychotherapist at Almaty's Center for Psychological Assistance, told Kontur. "And participating in the war gives them the feeling that they are heroes and that everyone around them owes them something."

SMO veterans express their discontent and anger in a way that is familiar to them -- through violence, she said.

The war's consequences will not be limited to the social sphere, say analysts.

If the conflict continues for another five years and involves 3 million Russians, postwar crime could cost the country up to 0.6% of its GDP, Alexander Isakov, an economist at Bloomberg Economics, estimated last year.

SMO veterans may carry out more mass shootings in the years ahead, said Maslov.

He urged the Defense Ministry to tighten control over firearms circulating inside Russia, but questions remain about the effectiveness of such efforts.

"As long as the war in Ukraine continues, its terrible consequences are going to be felt in Russia as well," Ibragimova said.