Putin’s fears after Ukraine battle to be uncovered in propaganda marketing campaign

President Vladimir Putin faces a serious home menace as he tries to awaken patriotism amongst Russians amid the Ukraine battle reaching its third yr and exhibiting no indicators of slowing down.

Putin, who declared 2025 because the “Yr of the Defender of the Fatherland,” faces a menace to his rule from veterans of the Ukraine battle, in keeping with an evaluation by the Washington assume tank, the Institute for the Examine of Struggle.

He launched a “coordinated marketing campaign in late 2022 and early 2023 to forestall the emergence of an unbiased veterans-based civil society in Russia, seemingly out of worry that veteran teams might threaten the soundness of his regime upon their return from Ukraine,” Newsweek stories.

In keeping with the evaluation, the Kremlin “launched a number of initiatives to co-opt loyalist veteran figures and kind state-controlled veterans organizations in help of the everlasting militarization of Russian society on the federal, regional, and native ranges.”

The Kremlin has launched initiatives referred to as the Affiliation of the Particular Army Operation (SVO) and the SVO Army Brotherhood.

These actions are basically aimed toward preserving the veterans in examine.

Additionally it is an try and probably “keep away from” yet one more unfold of the “Afghan syndrome,” a Russian time period used to explain the social instability that adopted Moscow’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, a decade after they invaded them. The Soviet authorities’s lack of ability to reintegrate veterans who carried battle trauma into society after getting back from Afghanistan was disastrous.

“The Kremlin’s choice to launch this marketing campaign signifies that Putin fears the dangers and challenges related to reintegrating over 700,000 veterans into Russian society and thus stays unlikely to demobilize absolutely or quickly — even within the occasion of a negotiated settlement to its battle in Ukraine,” ISW stated of their evaluation.

“The troops returning do pose as a safety danger,” Seth Krummrich, a former US Military colonel and vp of consumer danger administration at International Guardian, instructed Newsweek, including, “Possibly not within the quick time period, however they signify a severe mid- to long-term drawback for Putin’s regime and any subsequent Russian authorities.”

Whereas the Kremlin tightly controls the narrative round troop casualties in Ukraine, a stance mirrored by Kyiv, Ukraine’s high common, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi reported a file variety of Russian soldier deaths in 2024.

Putin misplaced roughly 150,000 troopers in 2024 alone, bringing the overall variety of Russian army personnel killed because the battle started 36 months in the past to 434,000, he stated in January 2025.

“In a single yr … In 2024,” he added, stating that they misplaced “extra on this yr of hostilities… than within the earlier two years of the battle.”

A Moscow Occasions article earlier this yr confirmed that Russia’s ethnic minorities had been dying disproportionately within the Ukraine battle.

To appease native Russians, President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin authorities has supplied hefty monetary rewards for army service and has additionally enlisted migrant employees within the battle. In keeping with a 2024 survey by the unbiased Russian pllster the Chronicles venture, 37 % of troopers signed as much as be drafted to the battle for the cash in comparison with the 24 % who did it for civic obligation and patriotic emotions.

Veteran opposition actions between 2022 and 2023 included former officer Igor Girkin and Wagner Group mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, each motivated by private political agendas. Girkin was jailed for criticizing the Kremlin whereas Prigozhin died in a airplane crash after rebelling in opposition to Putin.