They lead party tickets, star in campaign advertisements and feature in televised debates. These are Russians who have fought in Ukraine, and they occupy a prominent place in this week’s parliamentary election.
Election officials report that nearly 200 candidates have served in Ukraine. The Kremlin presents them as part of Russia’s “true elite,” seeking to demonstrate that veterans of the now four-and-a-half-year conflict will be afforded an honored role in civilian life.
However, most analysts remain unconvinced that many of these veterans will ever wield genuine influence within the country’s ruling establishment, viewing the initiative largely as a tool to encourage additional volunteers to enlist.
Independent Russian media frequently document returning veterans implicated in assaults, drunken brawls, and even homicides. Some of these crimes were committed by men who had been recruited into the military from prison.
The election, which began Friday for the State Duma — the lower house of parliament — marks the first since the war commenced. It is also being conducted in territories of Ukraine that Russia seized and illegally annexed. The Kremlin is closely controlling the vote, aiming to bolster its narrative of broad public support for the war and lend a semblance of legitimacy to its actions.
Most Kremlin-aligned parties permitted on the ballot feature candidates identified as participants in the SVO — the Russian acronym for its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Among the most prominent candidates is Vladislav Golovin, 29, of the ruling United Russia party, who fought in the battle for the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and lost part of his leg. He has appeared at events alongside President Vladimir Putin, who bestowed upon him the title of Hero of Russia, the nation’s highest distinction.
In 2024, Golovin participated in Putin’s “Time of Heroes” initiative, which prepares veterans for government careers. He now leads a military and patriotic youth organization called the Young Army — though he also appears on Western sanctions lists.
United Russia fields several dozen candidates with a Ukraine war background. Another leading candidate is Yevgeny Poddubny, a well-connected state television war correspondent who was wounded by a Ukrainian drone.
The ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party counts among its top candidates Alexei Vereshchagin, who is described as having joined the Moscow-backed separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently commanded a brigade of volunteers.
“We are the ones our homeland has called upon to fight for the ‘Russian World,’ and we will fight,” Vereshchagin, who was born in Kyiv, declared in a campaign video, invoking a term popularized by Putin, particularly after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Ukrainian police released a photograph in March that appeared to show Vereshchagin and announced they were investigating him for his alleged involvement in home invasions and threats against civilians in the Kyiv region in 2022, before Ukrainian forces regained control of the area. They said he fought against Ukraine for over a decade. He has not publicly addressed the allegations.
By elevating veterans in the State Duma campaign, the Kremlin aims to convey to potential recruits that they would be fighting “for some higher cause, and that they have bright prospects ahead of them in the form of career advancement,” said Nikolay Petrov, a senior research fellow at the NEST Centre, established by exiled Russian businessman and opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But Russia also “doesn’t know what to do” with those returning from the battlefield, Petrov told The Associated Press. It therefore offers them largely insignificant positions with little actual authority, while concentrating its promotion efforts on those who already held public office.
Former Putin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov was more direct, dismissing the initiative as “empty talk.”
To persuade more men to enlist, “you need to promise them everything they want to hear — from promises of payments to flattery and stories of their special greatness, their contribution to the cause of building a new Russia,” Gallyamov told the AP.
The postwar path is far from straightforward for many veterans. Most who signed military contracts cannot terminate them under Putin’s 2022 “partial mobilization” decree, and those drafted that year have not yet been demobilized.
Those who are severely injured or have reached a certain age may be discharged, and some special units reportedly offer limited tours of duty.
Approximately 167,000 servicemen have returned from Ukraine, according to presidential administration official Sergei Novikov, who made the remarks in December — although Russian media reports and experts suggest the actual figure is considerably higher.
Competition for the Time of Heroes program is intense and requires higher education and management experience. Of more than 65,000 applicants in 2024-25, only 168 were accepted, according to its website. Of those, roughly 80 were appointed to various positions at the national, regional, or municipal level.
The independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported in June that at least 1,300 veterans had been appointed to government posts, elected to local legislatures and councils, or hired by state-backed companies or institutions. About 850 of them had prior government or related experience before serving, Meduza said, concluding that most beneficiaries were already part of the ruling class.
The AP was unable to independently verify those findings, though reports about government officials or legislators who served in Ukraine and then resumed civilian careers are common.
Duma deputy Alexei Zhuravlyov, head of the Rodina, or “Homeland” party, has reported serving at the front while retaining his seat as a lawmaker, as have some of his colleagues. He recently criticized a YouTube blogger who questioned why he is not fighting full-time in Ukraine. Zhuravlyov later stated that he spends “more time on the front line than in the Duma.”
Tambov regional Governor Yevgeny Pervyshov, a United Russia candidate who also served as former mayor of his native Krasnodar and as a Duma lawmaker, served in Ukraine as part of a special military unit in 2022.
The U.K. government described his unit in 2024 as having “an unusually high number of United Russia party members and sons of Kremlin VIPs.” In a post on X, the British Defense Ministry said the unit is predominantly engaged in drone operations far from the front, enabling elite political figures “to sidestep usual Russian military service requirements with guaranteed safety.”
After serving a tour of less than a year, Pervyshov was accepted into the Time of Heroes program and was later appointed Tambov’s acting governor before being elected to the position in September 2025.
Ivan Filippov, who studies propaganda and analyzes military and pro-war bloggers, says such examples fuel disillusionment within the pro-war community, which had initially been enthusiastic about Putin’s promise of a new “elite.”
“They were very happy when he said those words, but it turned out rather quickly that it’s not about (genuine) veterans,” he told the AP. Rather, he said, it concerns those who went to the battlefield once, “fired a howitzer, got their veteran credentials,” and returned to office.
Now, war hawks understand that returning troops will face “a difficult life” at home, he said.
“They understand clearly that no one will let them into power,” Filippov said.
Novikov, the Kremlin official, said in December that “tens of thousands” of returning veterans remain jobless, and this “forms a dangerous risk zone.”
When it comes to placing veterans in positions of power, the Kremlin naturally prefers “rational bureaucrats” who have served in the armed forces, said Petrov, the analyst.
“The authorities don’t at all need bandits that come back from there,” he added.
Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
