The Burden of Return: Russia’s Veterans, Regional Strain, and the Politics of Reintegration
When it comes to veteran reintegration, the Kremlin centralizes political control and loyalty-building while decentralizing the costs and responsibility for actual service delivery.
Introduction
The scale of the challenge of veteran reintegration in Russia is already outpacing state capacity, with just a fragment of war participants having returned and demobilized. The country’s patchwork of over 300 federal and regional programs has produced results that even public officials are forced to admit are scant. The Prosecutor General publicly berated the government for lagging in the employment and registration of returning soldiers. At the same time, independent reporting confirms widespread stigmatization of veterans in broader society and a lack of service delivery.
The Kremlin’s political priority is ensuring the political loyalty of returning soldiers and preventing them from turning into a political force, not improving service delivery. Therefore, a relatively small network of elite training programs receives political and financial backing over broad-based reintegration. Flagship cadre programs (Time of Heroes and its regional equivalents) have collectively served no more than 6,000–7,000 participants - a narrow pipeline designed to bind a select group of veterans to existing elites and state structures through networking and appointments.
The costs of wider reintegration are being systematically shifted onto regional budgets and, ultimately, the private sector at precisely the moment both are under acute fiscal stress. Regional budgets collectively ran a deficit exceeding 1.5 trillion rubles (approximately 19 billion dollars) in 2025, with healthcare and housing spending already cut across most regions; meanwhile, corporate profitability has collapsed amid high interest rates, tax hikes, and sanctions pressure. The resulting squeeze means that the sustained, diffuse costs of veteran healthcare, disability support, and employment - which fall disproportionately on subnational governments and employers - will act as a structural drag on Russia's public finances and private sector for years to come.
The centralization of resources with a parallel decentralization of political responsibility and costs is a defining feature of Russia’s federal system. This has been especially evident in crisis management contexts, which have been the dominant logic of domestic political governance since at least the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The decentralization of costs does not stop with regional and local governments. Large employers and apolitical or loyal civil society are also seen as reserves of state capacity that political administrators can rely on in crises.
The use of public organizations as well as large employers to mobilize voters in various elections (including the primaries of the ruling United Russia party) is a well-documented phenomenon. In 2021, as Russia carried out immunization against COVID-19, employers were enlisted as facilitating partners to carry out what was a generally unpopular policy. After 2022, the state has increasingly relied on employers and other similar organizations, such as universities, to identify and, in some cases, pressure potential soldiers who could be sent to fight in Ukraine.[1] Following the increasing success of Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian industrial infrastructure, the affected companies were told to assume the costs of anti-drone defense.[2]
This same cost-shifting mechanism is increasingly at play as the authorities draw on state-adjacent capacity to manage and finance veteran reintegration.
The scope of the issue
Estimates about Russian casualties and overall troop numbers in the war in Ukraine abound. Estimates of how many Russian service members have been demobilized and returned to Russia are few and far between, even though the issue of post-war reintegration is hardly less important for the future of the Russian state than the situation along the frontlines.
The last official figure was published in December 2025, with Sergei Novikov, head of the Presidential Administration's Department for Public Projects, stating that 167,000 soldiers had, at that point, returned from the war in Ukraine.[3] This likely does not include those on extended medical leave or those who were rotated back temporarily, and may only cover returnees who were demobilized and obtained combat veteran status. If one regards casualty figures recorded and analyzed by Mediazona and BBC as roughly representative of the contribution of any single region to the invading force in Ukraine, returnee figures posted by certain regions in spring 2026 (e.g., 3,500 in Tatarstan, 1,100 in the Ulyanovsk Region) would suggest a similar number of returned soldiers.[4]
There has been indication, however, that this is an undercount and the real number is significantly higher. According to a February 2025 analysis of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, by the end of 2024 the number of severely wounded service members was already 376,000, with around half of them having lost limbs.[5] Confirmed casualty numbers remained high in 2025, suggesting a further substantial growth of non-redeployable soldiers. In April and May 2026, British and Dutch intelligence estimated that up to 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the invasion since 2022, with “permanent losses,” including injured men who could not be redeployed, at 1.2 million in total, suggesting a wounded headcount in the hundreds of thousands. Local reporting has suggested that many wounded soldiers are being sent back to the frontlines by the authorities as military recruitment has ebbed. The Russian government has so far opted not to conduct another round of mobilization.[6] However, according to Yury Khabrov, the head of the “Defenders of the Fatherland” fund (FZO), a fund created by the federal government as an umbrella organization to help unemployed and disabled veterans, more than half of injured soldiers belonged to the two most severe disability categories and thus appear unlikely to be redeployed.[7] In January 2026, Russian state media reported, once again quoting Novikov, that there were about 250,000 unemployed veterans in the country at that time.[8] With regions routinely reporting employment figures in the 50–75 percent zone, this suggests, once again, a higher total number of returnees than officially claimed, potentially over 500–600,000.[9] This figure, however, was promptly removed from RIA’s website. The Labor Ministry, on its part, said that “more than half” of returning war participants were employed as of May 2026.[10]
What independent reporting as well as official and unofficial Russian government sources seem to agree on is that the integration of returnees is already a gargantuan task, with which the authorities have so far not been able to cope, and that in the future the size of this task will only grow. In April 2026, Prosecutor General Alexander Gutsan complained, in his report to the State Duma, about the unpreparedness of the government to prepare returnees for civilian life, or even to maintain a registry of them.[11]
This is even though the Russian authorities had launched more than 300 programs (including through the federal and regional administrations as well as state-supported civil organizations) to support veteran employment, as per the count of the Vyorstka news outlet based on state procurement records, and tendered more than 170 contracts, just in 2025, for the "educational services for professional training" of war participants and their families.[12] But these programs yielded scant results, with tens of thousands remaining unemployed, a fact Gutsan himself stressed, arguing that they were inefficiently planned and carried out.
Multiple news reports and research articles have also noted that, directly contradicting the Kremlin’s narrative about war heroes turning into a new elite, returning soldiers face suspicion, wariness and stigmatization in wider society, no doubt partly a consequence of the well-documented violent crime wave triggered by returnees (many of whom are former convicts), and the perceived financial opportunism motivating contract soldiers.[13] This also affects their prospects for reintegration and employability.
Gutsan’s warning was clearly aimed at the president, and it had an effect. On May 15, 2026, Putin signed a decree establishing a single baseline of 15 support measures that all Russian regions must provide to “SMO” (Special Military Operation) veterans and their families, regardless of where the person enlisted or where they returned.[14] The idea behind the decree is to address pre-existing disparities in the standard of care between regions and integrate what the federal government considers best practices. The mandated baseline, however, is quite modest. It includes subsidies of at least 100,000 rubles (about 1270 dollars) for purchasing and connecting household gas equipment, free or discounted access to cultural and sports venues, free legal aid, free psychological help, and priority access to educational and health care institutions; but also standards that are more important but less well defined, such as employment assistance and social support. Furthermore, regions must implement the standard before the end of the year following the conclusion of the war, an unspecified future date, rather than immediately.
Even without formalized common standards, the Kremlin has means to signal to regional administrators what it expects to see implemented. Such means include the utilization of regions with a special status as examples for others to follow, public competitions of best practices, and the inclusion of reintegration-linked benchmarks in the key performance indicators used to evaluate the work of regional governors. The authorities have been using all three over the past year to incentivize policies focused on the reintegration of soldiers. Flagship initiatives were launched in wealthy regions such as the Moscow Region and Tatarstan with political weight, but also in regions with ambitious governors, such as the Vologda Region and the Altai Republic. Regional key performance indicators (KPI) for governors now include "Satisfaction of SMO participants with conditions for medical rehabilitation, retraining, and employment."[15] “Best practices” have been highlighted at economic and business fairs, as well as in the State Council. This consultative institution serves as an intermediary between the Presidential Administration and the regions.[16]
The direction of these initiatives is clear: the federal government is shifting both the political responsibility for and the costs of soldier reintegration onto lower-level budgets and eventually employers and the private sector, at least while the ongoing prosecution of the war remains an unquestionable political priority for the federal budget. As described below, plans to improve the level of care, subsidies, training programs, and social programs to incentivize reintegration do exist, but are insufficient, and public focus is on programs designed to ensure political loyalty.
This is the consequence of the long-term general assumptions governing state-society relations and multi-level governance on behalf of the Russian authorities, which predated the full-scale war. Subnational governments are understood as primarily crisis management administrators and political buffers, civil society and employers as additional state capacity reserves, and returning veterans as a burden and potential political risks. Unable and disincentivized to preventively build sufficient public service capacity to absorb a large number of wounded and traumatized soldiers over the past years, federal and regional authorities are passing costs and responsibility onto lower levels when they can.
A showcase elite vs the masses
One of the core promises that Putin personally made to war participants is that they would form Russia’s new elite, both figuratively and in an administrative sense.[17] Showing that returning war participants would have access to the public administration positions that imply financial security and social status has been an essential element of recruitment efforts.
The main vehicle to carry out this promise has been the "Time of Heroes” program, a personal initiative of Putin, curated by Sergei Kirienko, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, and run through the Presidential Academy for National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), the institution behind earlier public official training programs such as the School of Governors. The program was launched in 2024, with a second cohort starting in June 2025 — expected to graduate in June 2026 — with the two cohorts collectively numbering 168 participants.[18]
However, the federal program represents an extremely narrow pipeline that allows the Kremlin to hand-pick candidates and eliminate those who are too ambitious, too independent, or unknown quantities.[19] Reports have suggested that military commanders are pressuring soldiers not to apply to the program.[20] Most — though not all — of those who have been accepted had prior experience in public administration or are career soldiers. As of May 2026, 70 of 83 graduates of the federal track had received appointments in state administration, state companies, or development institutions, with a second cohort about to finish instruction.[21]
Researcher Mikhail Komin, in his study of the federal Time of Heroes program, argued that the main goal of the program is to broaden the administrative coalition favoring (or tolerating) continued confrontation with the West and a militarized foreign policy under the leadership of Putin, all while the Presidential Administration is also actively testing actual leadership skills to create a notion of “good” and “bad” veterans.[22]
The war has indeed influenced top-level appointments in the regions. Seven (of 83) current regional governors have demonstrably used the war as a career lift. However, only two of them went through Time of Heroes training: Belgorod governor Alexander Shuvaev and Tambov governor Yevgeny Pervyshov — who nonetheless had prior experience in public administration.[23] Of the rest, five are career civil servants who served as occupation administrators in Ukraine — a similar experience, albeit with major practical differences — while one is a former leader of Time of Heroes (but not a participant). Apart from them, Artyom Zhoga, a Time of Heroes participant from Eastern Ukraine, was appointed presidential plenipotentiary to the Urals Federal District, an ambiguous position in which Zhoga has not been particularly impactful.[24] Dozens of further war participants have been appointed deputy governors and ministers, typically responsible for social policy affecting other war veterans, patriotic education, or sports, after Putin specifically instructed governors in September 2025 to appoint more veterans to such positions.[25]
Public commentary has often dismissed war participants appointed to oversee policy areas adjacent to veteran aid as simply making up numbers, especially if they are in a deputized position. Indeed, a very likely purpose of such appointments of war participants is loyalty signaling and box-ticking. In 2026, Vologda Region governor Georgy Filimonov directly suggested including the number of veterans appointed to public administration positions on the list of key performance indicators for regional governors.[26] However, for the federal authorities, an important goal of reintegration is to ensure that no independent, politically active network of war participants can emerge. Offloading the political responsibility of reintegration onto war participants is one way of reaching this goal. The appointments thus not only serve the dual goals of loyalty signaling from below and norm-setting from above, but also the practical purpose of sharing responsibility for reintegration between the state and war participants themselves.
Another way of ensuring the political loyalty of war participants has been integrating a select number of them into existing political structures and networks. Some of these institutions are parties. The number of war participant candidates in regional and local elections grew more than threefold between 2024 and 2025, albeit the comparison is difficult to make because different regions and cities hold elections year by year. Proportionally, however, the numbers have remained low. The 1,607 war participants nominated in 2025 represented around 1.5 percent of all candidates, and most of them were nominated in local races.[27] War participants obtained 5.4 percent of seats in regional parliaments, concentrated in a handful of regions, the majority of them via party lists, over which parties have more control than over single-mandate districts.[28]
The governing United Russia party has played the leading role in integrating war participants into politics, and this will continue to be the case. In 2026, war participants made up 12 percent (630 out of 5,206) of registrants in United Russia’s primaries for the upcoming State Duma elections, around 50–55 of whom are expected to be nominated by the party, albeit many reportedly faked this status, as United Russia provides war participants with a 25 percent bonus.[29] Other parties are now also expected to play along and share the burden and responsibility. The Communist Party announced the participation of several war participants — including from the Chechen “Akhmat” Battalion — in its first-ever primaries, and the New People party is expected to field at least ten candidates.[30] This makes it possible that the authorities will be close to their previous goal of ensuring that around 100 war participants enter the 450-seat Duma, despite reporting in March 2026 that this goal was quietly abandoned due to doubts about the “manageability” of returning soldiers as politicians, especially after a war veteran appointed mayor of a town in the Kirov Region unexpectedly turned against the Kremlin’s municipal reform in late 2025.[31]
The vehicles of loyalty building do not necessarily have to be formal institutions. Civil service cadre training programs, such as the “School of Governors” or the “School of Mayors,” had served the purpose of creating a homogeneous and interconnected corps of professional public servants before the war. While “Time of Heroes” aimed to replicate this at the federal level, its pipeline was likely deemed too narrow. In spring 2025, instructed by the federal government, regional governments started their own training programs.[32] The purpose of these was to prepare around 30–60 war participants per region for various managerial positions, depending on their population size, and to provide them with a heavy dose of corporate-style team-building activities and networking opportunities.[33]
However, regional programs are designed to be vastly more accessible than the federal track, with some 4,500 places countrywide as opposed to the 83 in the first track of the federal program.[34] These programs train participants for less prestigious positions (including in publicly owned organizations that are only loosely connected to regional governments, essentially powerless municipal administrations, or local businesses). Notably, an increasing number of regional training programs are accepting people with secondary vocational education, without a university degree.[35] Several regions have introduced laws that reduce educational or civil service experience requirements for war participants, thereby making them more eligible for various municipal and regional positions.[36]
These programs share several similarities with the federal program.[37] Most of them offer standardized courses in public administration, business administration and communication in partnership with regional RANEPA branches (albeit some regions partner with local universities) and mentorship periods (стажировка) with regional public officials and managers; they are selective with acceptance rates typically between 5 and 15 percent; the selection process is similar, consisting of written tests, face-to-face interviews, and extensive vetting for character.[38] The programs also aim to provide an avenue for war participants to enter the administrative elite.
As of May 2026, at least 120 appointments have been made across regions to various administrative positions, typically of the sort that are not subject to stringent civil service vetting.[39] In the Vologda Region, for example, five district heads were appointed in 2025–26 from among the graduates of “Heroes of the Russian North,” the local veteran training program; in the Transbaikal Territory a graduate became deputy minister for social policy and demography, aligned with the trend of appointing war participants to oversee integration-related policies; several of them have been appointed mayors, typically of smaller settlements, but also of Birobidzhan, the seat of the Jewish Autonomous Region.[40]
The largest of these programs, as of May 2026, based on openly available enrolment data derived from regional press releases, are:
The cost of regional cadre programs is difficult to quantify due to wide disparities in how individual budgets account for these programs. Budget spending is fragmented across lines 0704 (vocational education), 0705 (professional training and retraining), 0401 (general government affairs), and occasionally other headings, with programs often not separately identified. Professional training spending on the whole has experienced a massive growth across most regions in the past four years, going from 265 billion rubles in 2021 to over 453 billion in 2025 across the country, but this is due in large part to retraining subsidies under the “Kadry” national project, which, among other goals, helps retrain workers for defense industrial plants that feed Russia’s war effort, and is overwhelmingly financed by federal transfers.[41] These expenditures dwarf cadre training programs.
Based on RANEPA’s publicly available price list, the programs themselves can cost in the double-digit millions of rubles in a mid-sized region.[42] Regional budget data, where available, confirms this, albeit, as mentioned above, different regions account for program expenditures under different budget lines. In the Perm Territory’s 2026 budget, for example, 29.6 million rubles are specifically labeled for the region’s cadre training program “Heroes of the Kama Region,” but many other regions do not name their programs specifically.[43] The Samara Region, with a budget of 322 billion rubles, 16 percent larger than the Perm Territory’s, spends 44.6 million rubles in total for “civil service development,” a significant growth over 2025.[44] Tatarstan’s budget, 66 percent bigger than Samara’s, foresees 64.8 million for the “management cadres” subprogram and 42.6 million for the “development of public service.”[45]
These, of course, do not cover mentorship costs, which regions often outsource to larger enterprises. For example, the general director of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) serves as a mentor in Chelyabinsk’s “Heroes of the Southern Urals”; local industrial directors act as mentors in the programs of the Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk Regions.[46]The “Heroes of Tuva” program partners with firms in the mining, energy and utilities sectors to hire alumni.[47] Some expenditures are compensated from regional budgets. Tatarstan, for example, offers a 100,000-ruble bonus for the successful employment of a program graduate at one of the regional enterprises where participants study corporate processes.[48]
Direct regional budget spending on cadre programs is comparable in magnitude to the regional cofinancing of professional retraining programs. Both represent a visible but negligible amount of money compared to the totality of regional expenditures, even considering post-program region subsidies paid to employers to actually hire graduates. To put the numbers in context: in 2024 Novaya Gazeta estimated total spending on the war to be at least 4 percent of regional expenditures, more than doubling from 2022.[49] Of this, hiring bonuses made up only a small fragment, but there is indication that this was not the full cost of recruitment and the costs have since grown: in 2026 researcher Janis Kluge found that on average, regions may spend 3-4 percent of their budget just on recruitment bonuses.[50] Even this represents only a small fraction of spending on active-duty soldiers. In 2025 Bashkortostan, a region with a budget roughly equal in size to Samara’s, spent 29.5 billion rubles in total on recruitment and, to a larger part, social payments to soldiers and their families, more than twice as much as in 2024.[51] The Altai Territory, with a budget around 40 percent smaller, spent 16 billion rubles — a similar amount proportionally — while the Leningrad Region spent 16 billion rubles but from a budget comparable to Samara’s.[52] Spending on social support and recruitment have also been among the few steadily growing headings in regional budgets, with social policy spending growing by more than 800 billion rubles (almost 20 percent) in regional budgets only in 2025, while the cost of recruitment has been growing each year of the war.
What links these integration programs, including the federal and regional “Time of Heroes” variants, as well as the appointments of war participants to party and public administration positions, is that they concern a relatively small number of privileged war participants and their purpose is not reintegration or employment, but loyalty building through camaraderie and networking with the involvement of large employers. Regional and federal cadre training programs are talked about in pro-Kremlin media and often benefit from the personal presence of high-ranking officials, while party leaders highlight the number of veterans on their lists of candidates and use their likeness on electoral billboards. Yet these programs have directly benefited between 6,000 and 7,000 war participants at most, from the several hundreds of thousands who have presumably returned to Russia.
Meanwhile, the much more difficult and costly task of reintegrating war participants into the job market and the social system mostly stays in the background.
After the partial mobilization of 2022, which represented the first of several timeline shifts in how the prospects of the war were perceived in Russia, the federal government started creating a legal and institutional environment to help the reintegration of returning soldiers.[53] A 2024 law mandated that employers keep jobs open for service members throughout their service.[54] The law allowed employers to hire temporary replacement personnel, but not to terminate the employment of soldiers. Yet even public officials acknowledged that many returning soldiers were either out of a job or never had one in the first place.
Veteran jobs are protected by other laws as well, which, once again, shift the cost of maintaining the workplace onto employers. By Russian law, veterans of combat operations have the right to professional training and additional professional education at the expense of the employer, if such training is necessary to carry out their job duties.[55] These provisions were tightened in February 2026, and the Ministry of Labor formalized recommendations specifically on how employers should help veterans with disabilities.[56] Also, “SMO” veterans are entitled to an additional unpaid leave of up to 35 calendar days per year, may use their main annual leave at any time of their choosing, and soldiers returning to their previous jobs are protected from mass layoffs.[57]
In 2025 regional governments moved to introduce new legislation to force the employment of returning soldiers. The Moscow, Samara and Vologda Regions were the first three regions to introduce mandatory quotas, obliging employers of a certain size to employ war participants. The Moscow Region often serves as a policy laboratory and norm-setter that other regional governments are supposed to follow, and this is what happened, with a number of other regions announcing similar decisions over the past year. As of April 2026, at least 39 regions had introduced veteran quotas, typically for large employers in the region, mandating these companies to have a set number of former war participants on their payroll.[58]
Quotas range between 1 and 4 percent, with at least nine regions mandating companies as small as 35 employees to take on at least one war participant. After the test period in the regions the policy would be adopted at the federal level. A pending federal bill would lean towards the more extreme end of this scale and make a 2–4% quota mandatory nationwide for employers with at least 35 employees (these companies are already covered by a disability quota).[59]
It is unclear how many returning soldiers are expected to be employed under the current quotas. In April 2026 Kirov Region governor Alexander Sokolov spoke about over 1,000 jobs at 400 enterprises in the region, while Tatarstan expected to see 3,000 positions opened by 545 employers specifically for veterans with criminal pasts.[60] Nationally, assuming based on labor statistics that roughly 32 million people work at companies covered by a future quota, a quota law could theoretically mandate the opening of up to a million jobs for war participants (many of which would of course already be filled).
Meanwhile, legislation has also been moving in a punitive direction. In May 2026, Tatarstan’s government announced a plan to fine employers that fail to observe the region’s “veteran quotas” that were introduced in 2025, closely following the example of the Altai Republic, which had introduced administrative liability in April.[61] The Vologda, Novgorod and Kursk Regions have already adopted quota fines laws in 2025.[62] This suggests widespread non-compliance with employment quotas. In fact, the Altai government confirmed that up until that point only 32 people had been hired under a quota, with simultaneously only 52.7 percent of demobilized veterans employed.[63] In the Samara Region, one of the first to introduce quotas, a local prosecutor complained in October 2025 that according to federal data, 1,300 veterans could not find employment in the region, and 400 received salaries below the minimum wage, even as governor Fedorishchev claimed, based on regional figures, that Samara had one of the best veteran employment indicators in the country "with 80% employed."[64]
While the Altai Republic is a relatively small and, by the standards of Russian regional politics, insignificant region (albeit one that is led by Andrey Turchak, a former general secretary of United Russia), Tatarstan, by its economic weight and the federal influence of its local elites, is one of the norm-setting regions, thus, once again, the example will likely be officially or unofficially recommended for other regions to follow before it is enshrined into law at the federal level.
The legal norm is thus moving towards obliging both state-owned and private companies to take on more direct and indirect costs related to the return of soldiers, including the retrofitting of workplaces to accommodate disabled returnees, and potential lower productivity.
Some of the costs are reimbursed by federal and regional subsidies; however, these are either one-time payments or only cover a certain amount of time. The federal subsidy from the Social Fund for hiring an “SMO” veteran was raised in 2024 and can now reach up to 6 minimum wages per hired employee; previously the cap was 3 minimum wages.[65] The subsidy for equipping a workplace for a former soldier with a disability is 200,000 rubles per workplace from the federal budget.[66] However, the subsidy structure requires the employer to have signed a 9-month full-time contract for disability subsidies and an open-ended contract for the hiring subsidy. If a disabled veteran leaves the company ahead of time, the employer needs to return the money. The administrative costs also weigh heavily on the employer. Wage supplements are typically time-capped and can differ between regions. After the subsidy ceases, employers either face the prospect of losing a subsidy and assuming the full costs; making soldiers redundant and (potentially) getting fined; or, potentially, paying a bribe not to get fined.
At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in 2026, Alexei Vovchenko, the director of the National Agency for Qualifications Development, said that the genuine integration of returning war participants into the workforce required the involvement of the entire management chain down to foremen and even fellow workers. This incurs hidden costs for employers, e.g., mentoring, psychological support and potential retraining costs, for which they are not compensated.[67] A source in the Labor Ministry described the situation to journalist Farida Rustamova, saying that the best solution would be to pay veterans so that they do not turn up for actual work.[68]
On the whole, forcing employers to hire veterans and policing compliance would result in higher de facto control over the private sector for the security services and the Defense Ministry, which would presumably monitor compliance and promote employment, respectively, while at the same time resulting in lower productivity and investment. It is unsurprising that there has been a quiet pushback against these quotas from employers.
Other initiatives to reintegrate unemployed veterans into the labor market have been proposed by various regions: e.g., the prospect of employing them as school security guards was raised in Udmurtia; using them to create a “migration police” was proposed in the Khabarovsk Territory.[69] The lure of these solutions is that, in theory at least, they require little or no retraining. However, even notwithstanding the risks inherent in placing armed veterans in public locations, they would essentially transfer wage costs onto regional budgets.
The Ministry of Economic Development has also promoted the involvement of veterans in small business, with minister Maxim Reshetnikov saying that veterans “have a lot of energy.” Most regions are now part of the “Agromotivator” program, which aims to help veterans run agribusinesses, but with total allocations of just 900 million rubles (with potentially 5–7 million rubles per project), this only affects mere hundreds of returnees.[70] A bill introduced in St. Petersburg's legislative assembly would give unemployed “SMO” veterans unconditional access to up to 350,000 rubles to start a business under the so-called “social contract” programmes (which are available to every Russian citizen, not only veterans), without the income means-testing normally required.[71] Wealthier regions can launch their own programs, such as Tatarstan’s business incubator program. Meanwhile, however, direct state support to small enterprises declined by almost a third in the first three months of 2026 relative to the same period in 2025, and SMEs have been suffering from tax hikes introduced in 2026, rendering most of them unprofitable with a negative outlook (see below).[72]Similar to hiring incentives that place most long-term costs on the employer, subsidies aimed at returning soldiers to start small businesses may indeed help them set up private enterprises, but will not create the conditions for these businesses to thrive — unless regional budgets fill the gap.
Upon the encouragement of the federal government, more than 80 Russian regions have also adopted laws allowing the free transfer of land plots to war participants. In some regions they receive land out of turn, ahead of other benefit recipients (such as WWII veterans, large families or disabled persons), but still experiencing long delays. Also, in many documented cases, these lots are not valuable and often not connected to local infrastructure, showcasing the gap between official reports and realities on the ground. Some regions have already introduced pecuniary compensation for veterans who do not receive land plots, ranging from 200,000 to 1.3 million rubles.[73]
It would appear that the only realistic broad subsidy that the federal government is able to sustain in the longer term under current economic constraints is the involvement of war participants in the defense industrial complex where, as long as the state defense order is maintained at near-current levels, wage support is de facto guaranteed. As we have seen, this too requires some cofinancing from regional budgets in the form of supporting retraining programs.
Another problem affecting the larger mass of returnees is access to health care, and here, once again, costs are shared among the federal budget, regions and employers. The scale of the problem is most likely larger than what the Russian authorities anticipated. By 2026, Russia had almost tripled the procurement of prosthetics compared to pre-war levels, due to the mass appearance of war disabled. The federal budget for 2026 allocates 98.16 billion rubles for this purpose, compared to just 37.2 billion in 2022.[74] According to an estimate by the IISS, already by the end of 2024, 376,000 Russians had received severe wounds and become disabled on the front; every second severely wounded person faced amputation of limbs.[75] The Ministry of Labor’s own data suggested that the number of disabled persons needing technical rehabilitation had grown by 600,000 in just two years after the full-scale invasion started (albeit the methodology was changed in 2025).[76]
Shortly after its creation in 2023, the Defenders of the Fatherland Fund (FZO), led by Anna Tsivilyova, Vladimir Putin’s cousin, was tasked with overseeing the provision of aid, including prosthetics, to disabled returnees.[77] The federal government mostly funds the FZO; however, it also accepts donations from businesses and private citizens. Although donations only made up a little over one percent of the FZO’s budget of more than 42 billion rubles in 2025 (rising to 50 billion in the current budget), putting pressure on businesses with administrative means when assistance needs to be scaled up remains an option.[78] Regional and municipal governments also contribute to projects and costs of the fund in several ways, e.g., by providing buildings to house the fund’s 4,300-strong regional staff, and contracting with it to co-fund various programmes.[79]
At the same time, it is very difficult to assess the efficacy of the fund’s activities, given that it is not subject to the same transparency requirements as regular charitable funds, with aggregate figures voluntarily published by the FZO itself the only available statistical data. Reports about the fund focusing primarily on publicity stunts rather than providing aid efficiently abound in the independent Russian press and on Russian social media.[80]
Another issue of greater magnitude and more complexity is the general lack of capacity in a Russian health care system. The system has suffered from years of underfunding and did not build capacities to accommodate hundreds of thousands of veterans from a long war that no one anticipated while also providing service to the general population. Returning war participants who need medical care would theoretically end up in military hospitals or be placed in one of the rehabilitation centers run by the Social Fund of Russia (SFR). But these institutions have been severely lacking in capacity. In 2025 the SFR was planning to provide therapy to a mere 17,000 war participants.[81] A 2026 investigation by Novaya Gazeta found that civilian hospitals were forced to treat soldiers, crowding out patients from the general population, due to the unpreparedness and the lack of capacity of the military health care system.[82]
To ease waiting times, in April 2026 deputy prime minister Tatyana Golіkova announced that by the end of 2028, 10 new prosthetic-orthopedic rehabilitation centers would be created from federal budgetary funds.[83] But beyond this, part of the funds to create more capacity will likely have to come out of regional budgets: after the adoption of the Strategy for Development of the Rehabilitation Industry in November 2025, the federal government has encouraged governors to develop their own specialized rehabilitation programs.[84] A month later, the Tula Region signed an agreement with the FZO and the state conglomerate Rostec on the creation of a “high-technology prosthetics center for SMO participants”, and the Stavropol Territory signed a similar agreement with the FZO in March 2026 on investing into a sports rehabilitation center.[85]
Over the past five years, however, regions have been struggling to maintain prior standards of healthcare financing, with aggregate expenditures dropping in nominal terms in both 2022–23 before rising again in 2024 and 2025, but not enough to offset the inflation in the same period.[86] An October 2025 survey by the SuperJob website found that medical organizations faced the largest labor shortages in the country, especially in poorer regions.[87] This is unlikely to change under the current conditions of increasing fiscal pressure on regional budgets.
The limits of cost shifting
Both regional budgets and employers are called to take on a bigger share of costs associated with veteran reintegration at a time when their own financial spaces have been shrinking for several years, preventing them from spending more on investment into longer-term projects and development initiatives.
For Russian employers as a whole, comparatively high profits in 2023 gave way to a compression since 2024. According to Rosstat’s preliminary figures, the ruble value of aggregate corporate profits in 2025 was back at the level of 2021, with a cumulative inflation of more than 50 percent in the same period.[88] This drop has been driven by three simultaneous forces: the central bank’s key rate was raised to 21 percent and then slowly reduced to 14.5 percent (as of June 2026), putting a significantly higher debt servicing burden on sectors not benefiting from subsidized loans; commodity export revenues fell from their 2022–2023 peaks due to sanctions and logistical problems (e.g. the general lack of transit capacity towards Asian markets, but also, more recently, Ukraine’s successful drone campaign against Russia’s oil refining and export infrastructure), all while imports became significantly more expensive; and the corporate income tax rate was raised to 25% from 2025 on to capture more private sector income for the federal budget that finances the war in Ukraine. The share of financially vulnerable firms has already exceeded post-2022 sanction-shock levels and is on track to exceed pre-crisis peaks in 2026.[89]
Small businesses — which, as discussed above, the authorities also regard as a potential avenue back to the civilian economy for returning soldiers — are experiencing equal, if not an even larger, squeeze on their profits than the average employer. A Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey found that in the first quarter of 2026 almost two-thirds of small businesses were unprofitable.[90]
Similarly and concurrently, corporate income tax receipts in regional budgets fell for the third straight year. In 2024, aggregate receipts were 4.1 percent lower than a year prior, and in 2025 they fell by a further 8.8 percent in nominal terms. While higher personal income tax receipts compensated somewhat for this shortfall, the simultaneous decline of corporate income tax receipts and the stagnation of interbudgetary transfers have put pressure on regional budgets and opened up wide deficits, exceeding 1.5 trillion rubles in 2025, and likely growing further in 2026, according to the federal Finance Ministry’s own estimates. The overwhelming majority of regional budgets were running a deficit in 2025 and 28 of them had done so for the third straight year. The worst deficit indicators were produced by regions whose key industries, primarily coal, metallurgy, timber and carmaking, have experienced protracted crises. Many of them were also low on reserves, placing them in a fiscal danger zone. In the absence of additional cheap federal financing and high borrowing rates, regional governments running high deficits have the choice between further raising their debt service costs or slashing expenditures. The deficit problem is not temporary; it is structural, and it will take more than a temporary upswing in the Russian economy to improve the situation.[91]
Expenditure cuts are difficult as roughly two-thirds of regional expenditures cover social aid payments and essential public services, such as education, health care (e.g., hospital maintenance and construction, salaries and bonuses for medical personnel), housing and utilities (including investment into the upgrading of infrastructure). Many of these are vital not only to reduce short-term political risks, but for maintaining the very social infrastructure that returning soldiers will rely on.
Yet, regions are already cutting spending on these core competences. Nineteen regions reduced health care expenditures substantially in their 2026 budgets, after, as mentioned above, years of falling expenditures in real terms and hiring difficulties in the healthcare sector.[92] Since 2022, 66 regions have at least once cut their housing and utilities budgets too, with 15 planning to do so in 2026.[93] Wage costs for public employees are also being cut in certain regions in 2026, which in practice means suspended bonuses and closures of non-protected public jobs.[94]
It is in this shrinking fiscal space that regions would have to find space for veteran reintegration programs and additional social spending. When this is impossible, the political imperatives are clear: regional leaders need to prioritize programs and spending that help ensuring the loyalty of war participants, and, where possible, pass part of the costs onto employers and the civil society. Regional officials are increasingly open about this: in June 2026, for instance, the deputy prime minister of the Novosibirsk Region justified the freezing of all construction projects with the necessity to meet social obligations to soldiers' families and other citizens after regional tax receipts collapsed and debt servicing grew in 2025.[95]
Conclusion: stress points
Federal spending on supporting soldiers and veterans is opaque and therefore it is difficult to estimate both the cost borne by various levels of the state and the efficiency of the spending. Considering federal injury payments, the cost of prosthetics, retraining and incentives, just the direct costs of the reintegration of disabled veterans upon their return can reach several millions of rubles per veteran, with an upfront cost of injury payments, demobilization costs and with longer-term costs spread out across the following years. In June 2026, Vladimir Putin claimed that there were “more than 700,000” Russian soldiers in Ukraine. [96] Overall, considering up to 350,000–400,000 seriously injured veterans, many of them with disabilities, at least a fifth of returnees needing long-term PTSD treatment and/or prosthetics, and the state providing employment incentives for 250–400,000 unemployed and disabled veterans, based on the current levels of support and the scarce budget information outlined above we can conservatively estimate a total upfront cost of at least 1.7–2 trillion rubles. This of course itself is spread out unevenly across several years as soldiers return, with a significantly larger portion coinciding with a future general demobilization. Compare this with planned federal budget spending of 44.1 trillion rubles in 2026. Retraining, long-term health care, wage support, military pensions, social support, as well as other indirect and indirect (opportunity) costs will come on top of this over an even longer period and could multiply the above sum.
Regional spending on soldiers and their families varies due to different standards for payouts.[97] From the examples of Bashkortostan, the Altai Territory and the Leningrad Region, we can see that last year, official war-related payments could reach between 5 and 10 percent of regional budgets per year (and potentially more), and recent amendments to the budget code aim to facilitate further spending on the war at the regional level, at the expense of infrastructure investments.[98]While some of this spending is cofinanced by federal transfers, it should be classified under regional spending since, as we have seen, such transfers crowd out funds that could otherwise be spent on other policy objectives. While the end of the war would also simultaneously create space in regional budgets via the cessation of recruitment bonuses and an income lift that is difficult to estimate without knowing the exact economic trajectory of the post-war recovery and the lifting of sanctions, social obligations and the need to support regional economies would remain as budgetary objectives for the foreseeable future.
Cost-sharing between the federal government, regions and employers does not only occur vertically, but also over time. For the larger mass of non-privileged returnees, the federal state pays upfront for the politically salient costs, e.g., lump-sum injury payments, professional retraining costs and (partly) high-technology prosthetics. Regional budgets, however, disproportionately need to finance the sustained and diffuse costs, ranging from hospital infrastructure and maintenance, long-term care and social payments, housing adaptation, psychological services, parts of employment placement incentives, healthcare bonuses, as well as, indirectly, the opportunity cost of not spending the funds on initiatives benefiting the civilian population at large. Employers, meanwhile, face pressure from both the federal and regional authorities, and stand to bear a growing share of the costs through mandated hiring (which the federal government is moving towards formalizing across the country), workplace adaptation, lost productivity and, in some cases, mandated donations.
The overall costs of reintegration, while likely insufficient to cause severe liquidity problems for the federal and regional budgets, are nonetheless notable and will be a severe drag on federal, regional and municipal public finances as well as employer budgets for years to come. One important caveat is that the prioritization of ensuring the political loyalty of returning soldiers and the prevention of the emergence of veterans as a social force with a distinct political identity will guide spending priorities, which can simultaneously result in the cutting or the non-implementation of certain programs, and the redirection of budgetary funds from projects benefiting the civilian population in favor of veteran reintegration.
The authorities’ continued reliance on the “state capacity reserve” consisting of employers and civil society will likely allow Russia to expand its means to spend on veteran reintegration. At the same time, this will mean that these spare capacities cannot be used for other purposes, and the increased demand will also put stress on the very relationships that the federal authorities need to ensure domestic political and social stability.
The latter issue is increasingly salient as Russia’s society, from ordinary citizens to economic elites, seems to be undergoing yet another timeline shift in the war. The implicit promise that the election of Donald Trump would open the window for a Russian victory has faded as the federal government spent 2025 trying to push for more than what ultimately seemed to be on offer, downplaying the rising domestic costs. Meanwhile, a wave of successful Ukrainian drone strikes are imposing considerable costs on Russia’s industrial hinterland, and with the latest amendments of the Budget Code adopted in 2026, the federal government has enabled even more unfettered spending on the war.[99] This may be delaying, or drawing out, the imminent return of hundreds of thousands of veterans and the costs associated with them, but at the same time, it demands even more patience and sacrifices from the society.
[1] “Ryazan Governor Orders Businesses to Set Military Recruitment Quotas,” Moscow Times, March 31, 2026, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/31/ryazan-governor-orders-businesses-to-set-military-recruitment-quotas-a92390; Clare Sebastian and Katharina Krebs, “‘Colossal’ pressure: How Russia is targeting university students for military recruitment,” CNN, April 14, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/14/europe/russia-students-military-recruitment-campaign-intl-cmd.
[2] Alexandra Prokopenko, “In Russia, Private Companies Have Been Left to Pick Up the Tab for Ukrainian Drone Attacks,” Carnegie Politika, May 14, 2026, https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2026/05/russia-drone-defense-economy.
[3] “Stalo izvestno chislo veteranov boyevykh deĭstviĭ, vernuvshikhsya iz zony SVO” [The number of veterans returning from the zone of military activity has become known], RIA Novosti, December 23, 2025, https://ria.ru/20251223/svo-2064097028.html.
[4] “Russian losses in the war with Ukraine,” Mediazona, updated June 5, 2026, https://en.zona.media/article/2026/06/05/casualties_eng-trl.
[5] Yurri Clavilier and Michael Gjerstad, “Combat losses and manpower challenges underscore the importance of ‘mass’ in Ukraine,” Military Balance (blog), International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 10, 2025, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/02/combat-losses-and-manpower-challenges-underscore-the-importance-of-mass-in-ukraine/.
[6] “‘No Way Out’: Russia Sends Badly Wounded Men Back Into Battle In Ukraine,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 4, 2026, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-war-casualties-wounded-return/33771000.html; Mike Eckel, “Nearly 500,000 Russian Soldiers Killed In Ukraine Since Start Of All-Out War, British Intelligence Says,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 27, 2026, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-war-casualties-british-intelligence/33766873.html.
[7] Tat’yana Akinshina, “Boleye poloviny veteranov SVO s raneniyami poluchili I i II gruppy invalidnosti” [More than half of injured SMO veterans are classified as I or II group disabled], Vedomosti, June 8, 2026, https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/06/08/1204045-bolee-polovini-veteranov-svo-s-raneniyami-poluchili-i-i-ii-gruppi-invalidnosti.
[8] “V Kremle soobshchili, chto 250 tysyach vernuvshikhsya s voĭny – bez raboty” [The Kremlin announced that 250 thousand people who returned from the war are without a job], Radio Svoboda, January 26, 2026, https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-kremle-soobschili-chto-250-tysyach-vernuvshihsya-s-voyny---bez-raboty/33660515.html.
[9]See, e.g., for Tatarstan: “V Tatarstane trudoustroili okolo 70% veteranov SVO” [In Tatarstan around 70% of SMO veterans are employed], Biznes Online, May 7, 2026, https://m.business-gazeta.ru/news/701635; for Chuvashia: “V Chuvashii trudoustroyeny 57% vernuvshikhsya veteranov SVO” [57% of SMO veterans who returned found employment in Chuvashia], TASS, June 6, 2026, https://tass.ru/obschestvo/27679017;for Amur: “V Priamur’ye trudoustroyeno 75% demobilizovannykh uchastnikov SVO” [In the Amur Region 75% of demobilized SMO participants are employed], PortAmur, June 8, 2026, https://portamur.ru/news/detail/v-priamure-trudoustroeno-demobilizovannyih-uchastnikov-svo/; for Novgorod: “V nashem regione uroven’ trudoustroĭstva uchastnikov SVO dostig 65%” [In our region the level of employment of SMO participants has reached 65%], NGRegion, June 5, 2026, https://ngregion.ru/novosti/v-nashem-regione-uroven-trudoustrojstva-uchastnikov-svo-dostig-65.
[10] “Kotyakov raskryl statistiku po trudoustroĭstvu veteranov SVO” [Kotyakov made public SMO veteran employment figures], Kommersant, May 22, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8687998.
[11] “Genprokuratura zayavila o formal’noĭ rabote po trudoustroĭstvu veteranov SVO” [The General Prosecution made announcements on the formal work of improving SMO veteran employment], Kommersant, April 15, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8589526.
[12] Yulya Balakhonova, “‘Invalidy kak ya nikomu ne nuzhny’. Kak uchastniki ‘SVO’ pytayutsya ustroit’sya na grazhdanke” [‘Disabled people like me are not needed anywhere’. How ‘SMO’ participants are trying to return to civilian life], Vërstka, January 30, 2026, https://verstka.media/kak-uchastniki-svo-pytayutsya-ustroitsya-na-grazhdanke.
[13] Daria Talanova, Sonya Richter, and Ksenia Storozheva, “Coming home to roost,” Novaya Gazeta Europe, February 3, 2026, https://novayagazeta.eu/en/articles/2026/02/03/coming-home-to-roost-en.
[14] “Putin podpisal ukaz o yedinykh bazovykh merakh podderzhki dlya uchastnikov SVO” [Putin signed a decree on the single baseline support measures for SMO participants] Kommersant, May 15, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8670427.
[15] “Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii ot 28 noyabrya 2024 g. N 1014 ‘Ob otsenke ėffektivnosti deyatel’nosti vysshikh dolzhnostnykh lits sub”yektov Rossiǐskoǐ Federatsii I deyatel’nosti ispolnitel’nykh organov sub”yektov Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii’” [Decree no. 1014. of the President of the Russian Federation from November 28 2024 ‘On the evaluation of the effectiveness of the activity of high officials in the subjects of the Russian Federation’], Garant.ru, https://www.garant.ru/hotlaw/federal/1770213/.
[16] Irina Zhandarova, “Vybrany luchshiye praktiki trudoustroĭstva i adaptatsii veteranov SVO” [The best practices of SMO veteran employment and adaptation have been named], RG.ru, May 26, 2026, https://rg.ru/2026/05/26/vybrany-luchshie-praktiki-trudoustrojstva-i-adaptacii-veteranov-svo.html.
[17] “Uchastnikov SVO Putin nazval podlinnoĭ ėlitoĭ” [Putin called SMO participants future elites], Interfax, February 29, 2024, https://www.interfax.ru/russia/948380.
[18] “Vtoroĭ potok programmy ‘Vremya geroyev’: rezul’taty pervogo goda obucheniya” [The second track of the ‘Time of Heroes’ program: results of the first academic year], Programma ‘Vremya geroyev’, June 6, 2026, https://времягероев.рф/news/tpost/ovcmm17gt1-vtoroi-potok-programmi-vremya-geroev-rez.
[19] “‘Ne vremya dlya geroyev’: kak Kreml’ delayet bid, chto vyrashchivayet novykh liderov iz veteranov, no boitsya deĭstvitel’no populyarnykh voyennykh” [‘No time for heroes’: how the Kremlin pretends to draw new leaders from the ranks of veterans, but is afraid of actually popular soldiers], Vërstka, November 18, 2025, https://verstka.media/kak-kreml-delaet-vid-chto-vyrashhivaet-novyh-liderov-iz-veteranov-no-boitsya-deistvitelno-populyarnyh-voennyh; “Pyat’ sposobov ‘izmazat’ ėlity v krovi’. Kem stanovyatsya vypuskniki programm perepodgotovki dlya voyennykh” [Five methods to ‘mould elites from blood’. What are the graduates of soldier retraining programs are becoming], 7x7, May 20, 2026, https://semnasem.org/articles/2026/05/20/pyat-sposobov-izmazat-elity-v-krovi.
[20] Govorit NeMoskva (@Govorit_NeMoskva), “Khochesh’ chin — nachni so shturma. Rossiĭskikh voyennykh zastavlyayut otkazyvat’sya ot uchastiya v programme ‘Vremya geroyev’ [If you want a rank, start with an assault. Russian soldiers are pressured not to participate in the ‘Time of Heroes’ program], Telegram, October 17, 2025, https://t.me/Govorit_NeMoskva/52804.
[21] “‘Vremya geroyev’. Chto izvestno o vypusknikakh programmy, s kotorymi vstretilsya Putin” [‘Time of Heroes’. What is known about the graduates of the program, whom Putin met], TASS, May 22, 2026, https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/27501963.
[22] Mikhail Komin, “From battlefield to ballot box: Why Russia is drafting war veterans into politics,” European Council on Foreign Relations, September 19, 2025, https://ecfr.eu/article/from-battlefield-to-ballot-box-why-russia-is-drafting-war-veterans-into-politics/.
[23] “Uchastniki ‘Vremeni geroyev’ i ‘Shkoly gubernatorov’ vozglavili dve oblasti” [‘Time of Heroes’ and ‘School of Governors’ participants will head two regions] Vedomosti, May 13, 2026, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2026/05/13/1197082-uchastniki-vremeni-geroev; Il’ya Plamenev, “Uchastnik ‘Vremeni geroyev’ poluchil post vrio glavy Tambovskoĭ oblasti” [A participant of ‘Time of Heroes’ was appointed to caretaker head of the Tambov Region], RBC, November 4, 2024, https://www.rbc.ru/politics/04/11/2024/672907cc9a79475ff34c5e51.
[24] András Tóth-Czifra, “The Kremlin’s Balancing Act: The War’s Impact On Regional Power Dynamics,” Foreign Policy Research International, February 27, 2025, https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/02/the-kremlins-balancing-act-the-wars-impact-on-regional-power-dynamics/.
[25] For a list of appointment announcements, see https://времягероев.рф/news.
[26] Nadezhda Shestakova, “Georgiĭ Filimonov predlozhil otsenivat’ glav regionov po rabote s veteranami s SVO” [Georgy Filimonov suggested evaluating regional heads on their work with SMO veterans], Krasnyĭ Sever, September 30, 2025, https://www.krassever.ru/news/georgiy-filimonov-predlozhil-otsenivat-glav-regionov-po-rabote-s-veteranami-s-svo.
[27] Alesya Sokolova and Katya Orlova, “1,5% kandidatov ot ‘SVO’” [1.5% of candidates are from the ‘SMO’], Novaya Gazeta Europe, September 10, 2025, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/09/10/15-kandidatov-ot-svo.
[28] “Edinyĭ den’ golosovaniya 2025: ‘veterany’ v munitsipalitetakh, sboi v GAS ‘Vybory’, polnaya ‘zachistka’ pod ‘Edinuyu Rossiyu’” [2025 single day of voting: ‘veterans’ in the municipalities, disruptions in the GAS ‘Vybory’], Vërstka, September 15, 2025, https://verstka.media/edinyi-den-golosovaniya-2025.
[29] Timur Khaĭrutdinov, Nikita Kondrat’yev, and Yegor Feoktistov, “Kandidaty ‘Edinoĭ Rossii’ na praĭmeriz massovo prisvaivayut sebe feĭkovyye statusy ‘uchastnikov SVO’” [Candidates in United Russia’s primaries are massively appropriating fake ‘SMO veteran’ status]. Vazhnyye Istorii, May 29, 2026, https://istories.media/news/2026/05/29/kandidati-edinoi-rossii-na-praimeriz-massovo-prisvaivayut-sebe-feikovie-statusi-uchastnikov-svo/.
[30] Yuliya Maleva, “Kto lidiruyet v pervykh v istorii KPRF praĭmeriz” [Who is leading in the Communist Party’s first ever primaries], Vedomosti, May 27, 2026, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2026/05/27/1200211-kto-lidiruet-v-pervih-v-istorii-kprf-praimeriz; “Uchastniki SVO v kachestve kandidatov ot ‘Novykh lyudeĭ’ v Gosdumu mogut byt’, no ėto ne osnovnoĭ kriteriĭ — Nechayev” [SMO participants could be among the candidates of the New People party in the Duma election, but this is not a main criterium — Nechayev]]], Interfax, February 24, 2026, https://www.interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/uchastniki-svo-v-kachestve-kandidatov-ot-novyh-lyudey-v-gosdumu-mogut-byt-no-eto-ne-osnovnoy-kriteriy-nechaev.
[31] “‘Partiya uslovnoĭ svobody’. Kreml’ ne zhdët v novom sozyve Gosdumy ‘100 SVO–shnikov’” [‘The party of conditional freedom’. The Kremlin is not expecting ‘100 SMO-ers’ in the new composition of the State Duma], Vërstka, March 9, 2026, https://verstka.media/partiya-uslovnoj-svobody-kreml-ne-zhdet-v-novom-sozyve-gosdumy-100-svo-shnikov; Glava Sosnovki (@glava_sosnovka), “Dorogiye zemlyaki! Poyasnyayu yeshche raz za chto idët bor’ba.’” [Dear fellow citizens! I am once again drawing attention to why we are fighting.], Telegram, November 18, 2025, https://t.me/glava_sosnovka/1860.
[32] Bozhena Ivanovna, “Rezerv narodnogo glavnokomandovaniya” [Reserve of national high command], Kommersant, March 10, 2025, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7563609.
[33] “Kreml’ opredelil KPI dlya regional’nykh kadrovykh programm dlya uchastnikov SVO” [The Kremlin has specified KPIs for regional cadre programs for SMO participants], RIA Novosti, May 13, 2025, https://ria.ru/20250513/kreml-2016685256.html.
[34] According to the author’s own calculations based on regional news bulletins.
[35] E.g. “‘Ocherednaya patrioticheskaya “potemkinskaya derevnya”’. Kak v Bashkortostane i drugikh regionakh Povolzh’ya prokhodit otbor v programmu ‘Vremya geroyev’” [‘Yet another patriotic ‘Potemkin village’. How the selection for the ‘Time of Heroes’ program is taking place in Bashkortostan and in other Volga regions], Radio Svoboda, June 17, 2025, https://www.svoboda.org/a/ocherednaya-patrioticheskaya-potemkinskaya-derevnya/33445679.html; Vladimir Vasin, “Gubernator Teksler predstavil polpredu Zhoge chelyabinskiĭ analog ‘Vremeni geroyev’” [Governor Teksler presented to plenipotentiary Zhoga the Chelyabinsk version of ‘Time of Heroes’], URA.ru, March 31, 2025, https://ura.news/news/1052910502.
[36] See, e.g., Yaroslavl Region: “Uchastnikam SVO v Yaroslavskoĭ oblasti uprostili dostup k munitsipal’noĭ sluzhbe” [SMO participants will have simpler access to municipal offices in the Yaroslavl Region], Interfax, November 6, 2025, https://www.interfax-russia.ru/center/news/uchastnikam-svo-v-yaroslavskoy-oblasti-uprostili-dostup-k-municipalnoy-sluzhbe; the Transbaikal Territory: “Lyuboye vyssheye i bez stazha. Trebovaniya k chinovnikam snizili v Zabaĭkal’ye” [Any high office and without internship. Expectations from officials were lowered in the Transbaikal Territory], Chita.ru, March 20, 2026, https://www.chita.ru/text/politics/2026/03/20/76316912/; the Penza Region: Elizabeta Mironova, “V Penzenskoĭ oblasti uchastniki SVO smogut postupit’ na munitsipal’nuyu sluzhbu” [In the Penza Region SMO participants will be able to join municipal public service], Argumenty i Fakty (Penza), June 18, 2025, https://penza.aif.ru/society/v-penzenskoy-oblasti-uchastniki-svo-smogut-postupit-na-municipalnuyu-sluzhbu, etc., or for an overview: Stepan Mel’chakov, “Na Kuzbasse voyennuyu sluzhbu v zone SVO priravnyali k rabote chinovnikom” [In the Kemerovo Region service in the SMO zone was made equal to working as an official], Kommersant, October 30, 2025, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8162401.
[37] “V 2025 godu 87 sub”yektov RF zapustili regional’nyye kadrovyye programmy dlya uchastnikov i veteranov SVO pri podderzhke VShGU” [In 2025 87 Russian regions launched their cadre programs for SMO participants and veterans with the support of the VShGU], Vysshaya Shkola Gosudarstvennogo Upravleniya, December 26, 2025, https://gspm.ranepa.ru/novosti/v-2025-godu-87-subektov-rf-zapustili-regionalnyie-kadrovyie-programmyi-dlya-uchastnikov-i-veteranov-svo-pri-podderzhke-vshgu/.
[38] “‘Postavim u vlasti sposobnykh strelyat’. A dal’she-to chto?’ Kak ustroyeny regional’nyye programmy, gde uchastnikov voĭny v Ukraine uchat na gossluzhashchikh” [‘We are sending those who can shoot to govern. And then?’ How are regional programs where Ukraine war participants learn how to serve as public officials, structured] 7x7, December 16, 2025, https://semnasem.org/articles/2025/12/16/geroi-novosibiri; Yulya Balakhonova, “‘Invalidy kak ya nikomu ne nuzhny’. Kak uchastniki ‘SVO’ pytayutsya ustroit’sya na grazhdanke” [‘Disabled people like me are not needed anywhere’], Vërstka, January 30, 2026, https://verstka.media/kak-uchastniki-svo-pytayutsya-ustroitsya-na-grazhdanke.
[39] The author’s calculation, based on regional and local news bulletins.
[40] Oleg Kulikov, “Vologodskaya oblast’ prodolzhayet formirovat’ novuyu ėlitu iz uchastnikov SVO” [The Vologda Region continues formulating a new elite from SMO participants], Komsomol’skaya Pravda, May 20, 2026, https://www.kp.ru/online/news/6979191/; “Veteran SVO naznachen na dolzhnost’ zamministra sotsial’noĭ I demograficheskoĭ politiki Zabaĭkal’ya” [‘An SMO veteran was appointed to serve as Transbaikal’s deputy minister for social policy and demographics], Portal Zabaĭkal’skiĭ Kraĭ, May 22, 2026, https://75.ru/news/445292; “Mėrom Birobidzhana izbrali veterana SVO Kuz’mina” [SMO veteran Kuzmin was elected mayor of Birobidzhan], TASS, December 3, 2025, https://tass.ru/politika/25800535.
[41] Treasury of the Russian Federation, “Konsolidirovannyye byudzhety sub”yektov Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii i byudzhetov territorial’nykh gosudarstvennykh vnebyudzhetnykh fondov” [The consolidated budgets of the Russian Federation’s subjects and the budgets of territorial extrabudgetary state funds], https://roskazna.gov.ru/ispolnenie-byudzhetov/konsolidirovannye-byudzhety-subektov-rossijskoj-federacii.
[42] Institute of Law and National Security, “Dopolnitel’noye professional’noye obrazovaniye” [Additional professional education], Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, https://ilns.ranepa.ru/dopolnitelnoe-obrazovanie/.
[43] Ministry of Finance of the Perm Territory, “Proyekt zakona o byudzhete Permskogo kraya 2026 goda” [Draft budget of the Perm Territory for 2026] https://budget.permkrai.ru/approved_budgets/indicators2026.
[44] Finance Ministry of the Samara Region, “Proyekt zakona o byudzhete Samarskoĭ oblasti 2026 goda” [Draft budget of the Samara Region for 2026], Consolidated Budget of the Samara Region, https://budget.minfin-samara.ru/dokumenty/proekt-zakona-o-byudzhete-samarskoj-oblasti/project-by-years/2026-2/.
[45] Ministry of Finance of Tatarstan, “Proyekt zakona o byudzhete RT 2026 goda” [Draft budget of the Republic of Tatarstan for 2026] https://minfin.tatarstan.ru/2026-god.htm?pub_id=4950054.
[46] Ol’ga Shchapina, “Ot resheniya zavisit sud’ba goroda: uchastniki proyekta ‘Geroi Yuzhnogo Urala’ proshli obucheniye v delovoĭ igre” [The town’s fate depends on the decision: ‘Heroes of the Southern Urals’ participants received education in the game of business], Komsomol’skaya Pravda, February 3, 2026, https://www.chel.kp.ru/daily/27757/5204795/; Vasiliĭ Alekseyev, “Voyennykh proveryat na sovmestimost’ s vlast’yu” [Soldiers are evaluated on their compatibility with state power], Kommersant, March 24, 2025, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7603776.
[47] “V Tuve v kadrovoĭ programme dlya uchastnikov SVO zaregistrirovalos’ 625 chelovek” [625 people registered for Tuva’s cadre program for SMO participants], TASS, April 10, 2025, https://tass.ru/obschestvo/23645493.
[48] “Vovlechennost’ sub”yektov Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii v povestku Spetsial’noĭ voyennoĭ operatsii” [Involvement of the subjects of the Russian Federation in the agenda of the Special Military Operation], Tsentr Politicheskoĭ Informatsii, March 6, 2025, https://polit-info.ru/images/data/gallery/0_4639_vovlechennost_svo.pdf.
[49] Mariya Ėrlikh, “Khvatit kormit’ voĭnu” [Stop feeding the war], Novaya Gazeta Europe, November 7, 2024, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/11/07/khvatit-kormit-voinu.
[50] Russia’s military recruitment numbers remain steady, but how long can the regions foot the bill? Meduza asks researcher Janis Kluge, Meduza, February 23, 2026, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/02/23/russia-s-military-recruitment-numbers-remain-steady-but-how-long-can-the-regions-foot-the-bill-meduza-asks-researcher-janis-kluge
[51] Idėl’ Gumerov, “Byudzhet Bashkirii potratil 29,5 mlrd rubleĭ na vyplaty uchastnikam SVO i ikh blizkim” [Bashkortostan’s budget spent 29.5 billion rubles on payouts to SMO participants and their relatives], Kommersant, May 22, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8687834.
[52] Kira Nagornaya, “Lenoblast’ ispolnila byudzhet 2025 goda s rekordnoĭ sotspodderzhkoĭ I gotovitsya k vyzovam 2026 goda” [The Leningrad Region executed its 2025 budget with a record level of social aid and is preparing for the challenges of 2026], iVBG.ru, June 11, 2026, https://ivbg.ru/8424867-lenoblast-ispolnila-byudzhet-2025-goda-s-rekordnoy-sotspodderzhkoy-i-gotovitsya-k-vyzovam-2026-goda.html; Aleksandr Isakov, “Dokhody Altaĭskogo kraya v proshlom godu vyrosli do 198 milliardov rubleĭ” [The Altai Territory’s expenditures rose to 198 billion rubles last year], Argumenty i Fakty (Altai), June 11, 2026, https://altai.aif.ru/money/dohody-altayskogo-kraya-v-proshlom-godu-vyrosli-do-198-milliardov-rubley.
[53] “Trudoustroĭstvo uchastnikov i veteranov SVO v 2026 godu: instruktsiya dlya rabotodatelya” [Employment of SMO participants and veterans in 2026: instructions for employers], Uchet.Nalogi.Pravo, January 12, 2026, https://www.gazeta-unp.ru/articles/55254-trudoustroystvo-uchastnikov-svo.
[54] Yevgeniĭ Kruglov, “Za boĭtsami SVO sokhranyat rabochiye mesta” [Jobs protected for SMO soldiers], Parlamentskaya Gazeta, December 17, 2024, https://www.pnp.ru/social/za-boycami-svo-sokhranyat-rabochie-mesta.html.
[55] Federal‘nyĭ zakon ot 12.01.1995 N 5-FZ (red. ot 20.02.2026) “O veteranakh,” stat’ya 16, Mery sotsial’noĭ podderzhki veteranov boyevykh deĭstviĭ [Federal law no. 5-FZ from January 12 1995, amended February 20 2026 ‘On veterans’, Article 16, Social support measures for combat veterans], Konsul’tantPlyus, https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_5490/b0d793e46a33abc42082f106cd84e97d4dbba03f/.
[56] Anna Rudakova, “Osobennosti trudoustroĭstva uchastnikov SVO posle sluzhby: oformleniye, preferentsii, subsidii” [The peculiarities of the employment of SMO participants after their service: registration, preferences, subsidies], Kadrovoye Delo, March 26, 2026, https://www.kdelo.ru/art/386986-osobennosti-trudoustroystva-uchastnikov-svo-posle-slujby-oformlenie-preferentsii-subsidii.
[57] Anna Rudakova, “Yezhegodnyĭ i dopolnitel’nyĭ otpusk veteranam boyenykh deĭstviĭ: skol’ko dneĭ po TK RF” [Annual and additional vacation for combat veterans: how many days according to the Labor Code], Kadrovoye Delo, February 26, 2026, https://www.kdelo.ru/art/384435-otpusk-veteranu-boevyh-deystviy-19-m4.
[58] Alekseĭ Sidorov, “Minimum v 39 sub”yektakh RF ustanovili kvoty na trudoustroĭstvo uchastnikov ‘SVO’, podschitala ‘Novaya-Evropa’” [At least 39 Russian regions have set quotas for ‘SMO’ participant employment] Novaya Gazeta Europe, April 23, 2026, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/23/minimum-v-39-subektakh-rf-ustanovili-kvoty-na-trudoustroistvo-uchastnikov-svo-podschitala-novaia-evropa-news.
[59] Tat’yana Chernova, “Priyem na rabotu uchastnika SVO v 2026 godu” [Hiring SMO participants in 2026], pro-personal.ru, January 31, 2026, https://www.pro-personal.ru/article/1100499-25-m8-priem-na-rabotu-uchastnika-svo-v-2025-godu.
[60] “V Tatarstane 545 rabotodateleĭ gotovy trudoustroit’ uchastnikov voĭny s Ukrainoĭ ‘s kriminal’nym proshlym’—glava Mintruda respubliki” [In Tatarstan 545 employers are ready to hire war participants ‘with criminal pasts’ — the head of the republican Ministry of Labor], Radio Svoboda, February 25, 2026, https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-tatarstane-545-rabotodateley-gotovy-trudoustroit-uchastnikov-voyny-s-ukrainoy-s-kriminalnym-proshlym-glava-mintruda-respubliki/33687709.html.
[61] “V RT mogut vvesti shtrafy za nedobor kvoty rabotnikov-veteranov SVO” [Tatarstan may introduce fines for not observing SMO veteran employment quotas], RBC, May 25, 2026, https://rt.rbc.ru/tatarstan/freenews/6a13f8799a79476ba638418c; Valeriĭ Lavskiĭ, “Kvotu ukreplyayut shtrafami” [Quotas are shored up with fines]. Kommersant, April 7, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8571214.
[62] Yuliya Maleva, “Regiony nauchnut shtrafovat’ rabotodateleĭ za otsutstviye kvot dlya uchastnikov spetsoperatsii” [Regions are starting to fine employers for not observing quotas for SMO participants], Vedomosti, August 15, 2026, https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2025/08/15/1131737-regioni-nachnut-shtrafovat-rabotodatelei-za-otsutstvie-kvot-dlya-uchastnikov-spetsoperatsii.
[63] “V Gornom Altaye rabotodateleĭ zhdut shtrafy za nevypolneniye kvoty dlya uchastnikov SVO” [In the Altai Republic employers can expect to be fined if they do not observe SMO participant quotas], Tolk, April 7, 2026, https://tolknews.ru/respaltay/obsestvo/214305-rabotodateley-na-altae-budut-shtrafovat-za-nevipolnenie-kvoti-dlya-uchastnikov-svo.
[64] Anton Borovikov, “V Samarskoĭ oblasti 1300 veteranov SVO ostayutsya bez raboty” [In the Samara Region 1300 SMO veterans are without a job], Samara Online 24, October 13, 2025, https://samaraonline24.ru/samara/view/v-samarskoj-oblasti-1300-veteranov-svo-ostautsa-bez-raboty.
[65] Prikaz SFR ot 29.12.2024 N 2714 (red. ot. 26.05.2026) “Ob utverzhdenii Resheniya o poryadke predostavleniya subsidii na gosudarstvennuyu podderzhku stimulirovaniya naĭma otdel’nykh kategoriĭ grazhdan” [SFR order no. 2714 from December 29, 2014 (version from May 26, 2026) on Confirming the Decision on the order of providing subsidies on state support to hire certain categories of citizens], Konsul’tantPlyus, https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_496753/.
[66] “Subsidiya na oborudovaniye rabochikh mest dlya veteranov SVO s invalidnost’yu” [Subsidies for the equipment of workplaces for disabled SMO veterans]. Bukhgalteriya.ru, May 4, 2025, https://www.buhgalteria.ru/news/subsidiya-na-oborudovanie-rabochikh-mest-dlya-veteranov-svo-s-invalidnostyu.html.
[67] Irina Zhandarova, “Vybrany luchshiye praktiki trudoustroĭstva i adaptatsii veteranov SVO” [Best practices for the employment and adaptation of SMO veterans named], RG.ru, May 26, 2026, https://www.rg.ru/2026/05/26/vybrany-luchshie-praktiki-trudoustrojstva-i-adaptacii-veteranov-svo.html.
[68] Faridaily (@faridaily24), “God zapoyev, kredity, vsplesk nasiliya: pochemu vlasti opasayutsya muzhchin, kotoryye vernutsya s voĭny” [A year of drinking binges, credits, a surge in violence: why the government is afraid of the men returning from the war]. Telegram, March 17, 2025, https://t.me/faridaily24/1587.
[69] “Dlya okhrany shkol v Udmurtii khotyat nanimat’ uchastnikov voĭny s Ukrainoĭ—chtoby ėkonomit’ na nalogakh” [In Udmurtia they want to hire Ukraine war participants to protect schools in order to pay less taxes], SOTA, June 24, 2025, https://sotaproject.com/news/99618; Aleksandra Kazakova, “V Khabarovskom kraye nachalsya tretiĭ modul’ regional’noĭ programmy ‘Geroi Vostoka’” [In the Khabarovsk Region the third modul of the regional program “Heroes of the East” has started], RG.ru, October 23, 2025, https://rg.ru/2025/10/23/reg-dfo/za-partoj-veterany.html.
[71] “V Peterburge predlozhili davat’ bezrabotnym uchastnikam SVO po 350 tysyach rubleĭ na otkrytiye svoyego biznesa” [In St. Petersburg [deputies] suggested giving unemployed SMO participants 350 thousand rubles each to open their own business], Novaya Gazeta, May 25, 2026, https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/v-peterburge-predlozhili-davat-bezrabotnym-uchastnikam-svo-po-350-tysiach-rublei-na-otkrytie-svoego-biznesa-news.
[72] Svetlana Misikhina, “Podderzhka sub”yektov MSP i samozanyatykh v pervom kvartale 2026 g.” [Supporting small and medium enterprises and self-employed people in the first quarter of 2026], Komentarii o Gosudarstve i Biznese (VShĖ) 562, May 25, 2026, https://dcenter.hse.ru/newkgb, mirrored at https://dcenter.hse.ru/mirror/pubs/share/direct/1162895423.pdf.
[73] “Zemlya v nagradu: kak ‘SVO’ izmenila zemel’nuyu politiku v regionakh Rossii” [Land as a reward: how the ‘SMO’ changed land policy in Russia’s regions], DumaBingo, May 2, 2026, https://dumabingo.org/articles/65.
[74] “Rossiya utroila zakupki protezov iz-za massovogo poyavleniya invalidov na fronte” [Russia tripled the procurement of prosthetic limbs due to the mass emergence of disabled people at the front], Moscow Times, November 3, 2025, https://ru.themoscowtimes.com/2025/11/03/rossiya-utroila-zakupki-protezov-iz-za-massovogo-poyavleniya-invalidov-nafronte-a179093.
[75] Yurri Clavilier and Michael Gjerstad, “Combat losses and manpower challenges underscore the importance of ‘mass’ in Ukraine,” Military Balance (blog), International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 10, 2025, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/02/combat-losses-and-manpower-challenges-underscore-the-importance-of-mass-in-ukraine/.
[76] Yekaterina Krasotkina and Yuliya Selikhova, “‘Minus ruka? Plyus apgreĭd’. Chto proiskhodit s proteznoĭ industriyeĭ v Rossii” [‘Minus an arm? Plus an upgrade’ What is happening in Russia’s industry of prosthetics], Vërstka, December 12, 2025, https://verstka.media/chto-proishodit-s-proteznoi-industriei-v-rossii; “Rosstat izmenil metodiku oprosov sredi invalidov, chtoby ‘sokratit’’ chislo lyudeĭ, nuzhdayushchikhsya v protezakh, kreslakh-kolyaskakh i pampersakh” [Rosstat changed its methodology of surveys among disabled people in order to reduce the number of people who need prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and adult diapers] Vërstka, January 28, 2026, https://verstka.media/rosstat-izmenil-metodiku-oprosov-sredi-invalidov-sokratit-chislo-lyudei-nuzhdayushhihsya-v-protezah.
[77] “V fond ‘Zashchitniki Otechestva’ za protezirovaniyem obratilis’ 2 tys. veteranov SVO” [2 thousand SMO veterans have turned to the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ fund for prosthetics]TASS, October 19, 2023, https://tass.ru/obschestvo/19060243.
[78] Mozhem ob”yasnit’ (@mozhemobyasnit), “Fond plemyannitsy Putina za god osvoil trëkhletniĭ byudzhet: on potratil 42 mlrd rubleĭ vmesto zaplanirovannykh 14 mlrd. Lichnyye nakopleniya na vkladakh samoĭ Tsivilevoĭ vyrosli vpyatero” [The fund of Putin’s cousin went through a yearly budget worth three years: it spent 42 billion rubles instead of the initially planned 14 billion], Telegram, March 24, 2026, https://t.me/mozhemobyasnit/22909.
[79] Yekaterina Grobman, Aleksandr Tikhonov, and Anna Kiseleva, “Kak regiony gotovyatsya k otkrytiyu filialov fonda ‘Zashchitniki Otechestva’” [How regions are preparing to open local branches of the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ fund]. Vedomosti, May 31, 2023, https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2023/05/31/977780-kak-regioni-gotovyatsya-k-otkritiyu-fonda-zaschitniki-otechestva; “Putin obsudil s Tsivilevoĭ rabotu fonda ‘Zashchitniki Otechestva’” [Putin and Tsivilyova discussed the work of the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ fund], Vedomosti, December 30, 2025, https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2025/12/30/1167542-putin-obsudil.
[80] Veter Project, “‘The Motherland will discard you in the end’,” Novaya Gazeta Europe, April 15, 2026, https://novayagazeta.eu/en/articles/2026/04/15/the-motherland-will-discard-you-in-the-end-en.
[81] Dmitriĭ Artyukhov (@artyukhov_da), “V God geroyev rasshiryayem yeshchë odnu meru podderzhki uchastnikov SVO i ikh semeǐ” [In the Year of Heroes we are broadedning yet another support measure for SMO participants and their families], Telegram, July 1, 2025, https://t.me/artyukhov_da/5042.
[82] Matveĭ Leĭbin, “‘SVOshnikov nastol’ko dofiga, chto voyennyye gospitali ikh ne vmeshchayut’” [‘There are so many SMO guys that military hospitals cannot deal with them’], Novaya Gazeta Europe, May 19, 2026, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/19/svoshnikov-nastolko-dofiga-chto-voennye-gospitali-ikh-ne-vmeshchaiut.
[83] “V pravitel’stve anonsirovali sozdaniye 10 novykh proteznykh tsentrov na fone rosta chisla amputantov sredi ‘veteranov SVO’” [The government announced the creation of 10 new prosthetic centers as the number of amputees among ‘SMO veterans’ keeps growing], Moscow Times, April 16, 2026, https://ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/16/v-pravitelstve-anonsirovali-sozdanie-10-novih-proteznih-tsentrov-na-fone-rosta-chisla-amputantov-sredi-veteranov-svo-a192917.
[84] “Pravitel’stvo utverdilo strategiyu razvitiya reabilitatsionnoĭ industrii do 2030 goda” [The government confirmed the strategy of the development of the rehabilitation industry until 2030], Government of Russia, November 10, 2025, http://government.ru/docs/56873/.
[85] “Rostekh i ‘Zashchitniki Otechestva’ pomogut regionam sozdat’ tsentry protezirovaniya” [Rostec and the ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’ are helping regions to create prosthetic centers], TASS, December 1, 2025, https://tass.ru/obschestvo/25782245; “Na Stavropol’ye sozdadut tsentr sportivnoĭ reabilitatsii veteranov SVO” [Sport rehabilitation center for SMO veterans will be created in Stavropol], TASS, November 19, 2025, https://tass.ru/obschestvo/25672111.
[86] Treasury of the Russian Federation, “Konsolidirovannyye byudzhety sub”yektov Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii i byudzhetov territorial’nykh gosudarstvennykh vnebyudzhetnykh fondov” [Consolidated budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation and the budgets of territorial extrabudgetary state funds] https://roskazna.gov.ru/ispolnenie-byudzhetov/konsolidirovannye-byudzhety-subektov-rossijskoj-federacii.
[87] “Problema kadrovogo defitsita po-prezhnemu aktual’na dlya 8 iz 10 kompaniĭ” [8-10 companies are still suffering from the problem of cadre deficit], Superjob.ru, October 14, 2025, https://www.superjob.ru/research/articles/115530/problema-kadrovogo-deficita-po-prezhnemu-aktualna-dlya-8-iz-10-kompanij/.
[88] Federal State Statistics Service, “O finansovykh rezul’tatakh deyatel’nosti organizatsiĭ v 2025 godu” [On the financial results of organizations in 2025], Rosstat, March 11, 2026, https://rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/32_11-03-2026.html.
[89] “Dolya ubytochnykh organizatsiĭ v Rossii za yanvar’—noyabr’ vyrosla do 28,8%” [The number of loss-making organizations in Russia grew to 28.8% between January and November] Vedomosti, February 6, 2026, https://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/news/2026/02/06/1174701-dolya-ubitochnih-organizatsii.
[90] “Russia’s Small Businesses Slide Into Losses After Tax Hikes, Surveys Show,” Moscow Times, April 28, 2026, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/28/russias-small-businesses-slide-into-losses-after-tax-hikes-surveys-show-a92621.
[91] András Tóth-Czifra, “Die strukturellen Probleme der regionalen Haushalte in Russland” [The structural problems of Russian regional budgets], Russland-Analysen 482 (May 27, 2026): 2–5, https://doi.org/10.31205/RA.482.01.
[92] Pavel Kuznetsov, Sonya Savina, and Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, “V 2026 godu rekordnoye za vremya voĭny chislo regionov sokratili raskhody na zdravookhraneniye” [In 2026 a wartime record number of regions are reducing their expenditures on health care], Vazhnyye Istorii, March 10, 2026, https://istories.media/stories/2026/03/10/v-2026-godu-rekordnoe-za-vremya-voini-chislo-regionov-sokratili-raskhodi-na-zdravookhranenie/.
[93] Rina Nikolayeva, Sonya Savina, and Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, “Za vremya voĭny 78% rossiĭskikh regionov znachitel’no sokrashchali raskhody na ZhKKh” [During the war 78% of Russia’s regions have significantly reduced expenditures on housing and utilities], Vazhnyye Istorii, February 16, 2026, https://istories.media/stories/2026/02/16/za-vremya-voini-78-rossiiskikh-regionov-znachitelno-sokrashchali-raskhodi-na-zhkkh/.
[94] András Tóth-Czifra, “No place to hide a deficit,” Riddle, April 27, 2026, https://ridl.io/no-place-to-hide-a-deficit/.
[95] “Novosibirskoe pravitel’stvo opravdalo zamorozku novykh proektov ‘obyazatel’stvami pered uchastnikami SVO’” [The Novosibirsk government justified the freezing of new projects with ‘obligations towards SMO participants’”, Sibirsky Express, June 17, 2026, https://t.me/Sib_EXpress/73543
[96] “Putin: gruppirovka VS RF v zone SVO prevyshaet 700 tys. chelovek” [Putin: Russia’s army deployment in the SMO zone is over 700 thousand people], Kommersant, June 12, 2026, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8737173.
[97] “Regional’nyye vyplaty pri zaklyuchenni kontrakta uchastnikam SVO v 2026 godu” [Regional contract payouts for SMO participants in 2026], Zashchitnik.rf, August 26, 2025, https://защитник.рф/blog/regionalnye-vyplaty-uchastnikam-svo/.
[98] Valeriĭ Filonenko, “Regiony smogut napravlyat’ sem’yam uchastnikov SVO bol’she deneg” [Regions may send more money to the families of SMO participants], Parlamentskaya Gazeta, April 27, 2026, https://www.pnp.ru/economics/regiony-smogut-napravlyat-semyam-uchastnikov-svo-bolshe-deneg.html.
[99] Vitaly Shevchenko, “Russia’s fuel crisis intensifies as Ukraine steps up strikes on occupied territories,” BBC, June 8, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn75l36vdd8o; “Russia just rushed through a law to lift limits on borrowing and spending. Is the budget starting to crack?,” Meduza, June 11, 2026, https://meduza.io/amp/en/cards/russia-just-rushed-through-a-law-to-lift-limits-on-borrowing-and-spending-is-the-budget-starting-to-crack.
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