Russia has sent so many men to join its war in Ukraine that crime rates in the country dropped immediately after the invasion began. Now their return is starting to unleash a wave of outrage.
Crimes committed by soldiers not connected to the war rose by more than 20 percent last year, according to data from Russia’s Supreme Court. Although the overall numbers are still small and many returning members do not commit crimes, there have been jumps in violent crime and theft and drug-related violations.
These figures do not include crimes involving tens of thousands of prisoners released from prison to join the war under a program established by the late Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Those who survived six months earlier managed to get amnesty from President Vladimir Putin and returned to Russia as free people.
In prison, “they are treated like ‘we are nothing,’ and it gets worse before,” says Kazan-based sociologist Iskender Yasaveev. “The experience they bring back is trauma that will be seen for decades.”
Sociologists have long noted that crime rates tend to rise after military conflicts end, and researchers have looked at a number of causes for this, from social disruption to the abuse experienced by soldiers. Russia is unlikely to break that trend after Putin ordered the February 2022 offensive that sparked the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. The return of prisoners who fought for Wagner provides an early sign of what may be expected when hundreds of thousands of war-torn men return to civilian life.
Although low-level crimes are decreasing, the number of murders and sexual crimes, especially against children, has not decreased in the last two years. Indecent assaults on children have increased by 62% compared to the pre-war period, according to Bloomberg figures based on Supreme Court data.
The return of Wagner’s workers to Russia proved a shock to the townspeople and villages who found men they thought were serving long sentences in their midst. People convicted of murder, even cannibalism, were among those pardoned.
Before his death in a plane crash after leading a riot against the leadership of the Ministry of Defense in June last year, Prigozhin said that 32,000 prisoners he had rounded up had returned to Russia from the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the public uproar by telling reporters in November that criminals pardoned by Putin “are paying for their crimes on the battlefield in blood.”
However, a law that went into effect in March quietly removed the right to amnesty after six months of service, forcing conscripts to remain in the military until the end of the war, like other conscripts.
Still they come back, usually by leaving. Cases involving the military increased fourfold to 4,409 in 2023 compared to 2021, Supreme Court data shows.
Another defector, Artyom, said he fled after part of his army was killed during four months in Ukraine. The 34-year-old suspect, who asked not to be named, joined the army to escape harsh treatment in prison where he is serving a sentence for drug trafficking. No one told him that the service was never ending, he said.
The law that ended the amnesty also allows the Department of Defense to register not only prisoners but also people detained before trial. Russia Behind Bars, a prisoner rights organization, estimates that as many as 175,000 former prisoners were taken to fight on the battlefield.
The post-war crime surge could cost Russia about 0.6% of its gross domestic product, said Alex Isakov, Russia economist at Bloomberg Economics. Along with the direct cost of living and property, the state will face high spending on social and security, especially on the police, he said.
“From the Franco-Prussian war to the Global War on Terror, crime rates fell at the beginning of war and rose sharply after it. Russia is unlikely to find an escape from this pattern. The cost of post-war crime could drop from 0.2% of their gross domestic product if the conflict is resolved by 2024 to 0.6% of GDP, if it continues for another five years and about 3 million Russians are exposed to the fighting. “The full cost of the post-war increase in crime is likely to be very high,” Isakov said.
Anxious to avoid a repeat of the September 2022 draft of 300,000 soldiers that fueled public concern about the war, the Kremlin is relying on good pay to entice men to join the army. Contract soldiers are given monthly payments of 204,000 rubles ($2,300) in addition to signing bonuses of up to 1 million rubles.
That helped contribute to a short-term decline in crime, especially in the Russian provinces. The drop in recorded crime has been three times greater in areas with high levels of military involvement, compared to areas with only moderate levels, according to estimates by Bloomberg Economics.
“Economic crimes such as theft and robbery, which are related to poverty, have decreased because the war has poured money into the poorest areas and the poorest sections of the population,” said sociologist and criminologist Ekaterina Khodzhaeva.
Russian courts handled almost 62,000 more cases last year than in 2021, and the number of convictions fell by 2%. Police numbers also fell in many states, suggesting fewer were available to solve crime, as people left low-paying jobs for the more lucrative military service.
Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said in May there was a shortage of 152,000 officers across Russia, with one in four vacant positions in other regions.
That may add to the challenges faced by the authorities in preventing crime as more and more prisoners return from war to lead civilian lives.
“Like any other veteran, they may have post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Anna Kuleshova, a sociologist at the Social Foresight Group. “That goes hand in hand with previous experiences of incarceration, all of which combine and can lead to difficulties with social integration.”
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