The role of war veterans in the Russian State Duma elections

The State Duma elections that began yesterday in Russia will end on 20 September 2026. These are the first parliamentary elections to be held during wartime: soldiers will vote from their units; special rules apply to voting at the front and in occupied territories; and eleven single-member constituencies have been established in occupied Ukrainian territory, some of which strangely extend into towns that are not actually under Russian control. Moscow is using the upcoming elections to turn Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory into an administrative formality.

This attempt to normalise the war highlights the central paradox facing Moscow. The war against Ukraine has now been going on for over 12 years. Yet the Kremlin has essentially maintained its strategy of shielding the majority of Russians from the invasion.

Any significant opposition was crushed years ago and ‘Yabloko’, the only registered party that openly opposes the war, was removed from the electoral roll in August. ‘Yabloko’s’ support had already begun to rise even before the party launched its election campaign. What remains is not a contest between the regime and its critics, but a contest between candidates whom the regime has already approved.

However, a predetermined outcome does not render the elections meaningless. The Kremlin needs the elections for two conflicting purposes: both to convey and maintain a sense of controlled normality, and to demonstrate public support for the Kremlin’s war aims. The war must be visible enough to legitimise the role of veterans, territorial annexations and the ongoing sacrifices, yet distant enough to make it appear as though the elections are still taking place in peacetime. A predetermined election may shed light on how the Kremlin intends to integrate the war into the Russian political system and where these efforts might encounter difficulties.

In the past, Putin has used elections to demonstrate legitimacy and control, and to steer the competing elites. This time, however, he must also contend with the growing problem of the returning veterans.

“Novaya Gazeta Europe” estimates that a total of 2.5 million people have been conscripted, of whom at least 400,000 have already returned home from the front, whilst a further 700,000 will follow should the war come to an end. The entire Soviet contingent in Afghanistan during the 1980s totalled 620,000 troops over a period of nine years.

Veterans are returning with the expectation of privileged status, but also with the networks of contacts forged during their time at the front and with the grievances that have accumulated over the course of the war. The political question for Moscow is therefore: how can this new and vast electorate be prevented from developing its own interests and organisations?

The Kremlin has already witnessed this alternative twice: the ‘Afgantsy’ (veterans of the war in Afghanistan), whose associations slipped into the black economy and organised crime following the collapse of the Soviet state, and Prigozhin, whose veterans’ organisation marched on Moscow in June 2023. Its response is to reward individual loyalty rather than allow collective organisation — through employment schemes, reserved posts in the civil service, vocational retraining and incentives for employers, with much of the cost passed on to regional budgets that are already in the red. The state, which paid these men to go to war, must now pay them again so that they return home quietly and without fanfare.

Putin went even further, suggesting that veterans should become a new political class — essentially a ‘new elite’ that could form the country’s future leadership. In 2024, he launched the ‘Time of Heroes’ project, which aims to give veterans (as well as other figures involved in the war, such as employees of the military-industrial complex) priority access to government posts. The Soviet nomenklatura was a list of posts controlled by the party. ‘Time of Heroes’ is a list controlled by the Presidential Administration. Now that the regime has abolished the communist promotion system via a nomenklatura, it no longer has any institution capable of forming a new elite. It can only appoint one.

‘United Russia’, as was to be expected, has been the most important vehicle for the creation of the new warrior caste. Of the 4,374 candidates in this year’s primaries, 535 — or 12 per cent — were registered as war veterans, a category whose preliminary voting results were automatically boosted by 25 per cent. Other parties also fielded war veterans as candidates: the Central Electoral Commission approved the candidacy of 1,586 veterans for positions at federal, regional and local levels, of whom at least 200 were standing for the 450 seats in the Duma. In 2024, 308 ‘United Russia’ veterans won local and regional elections. Today marks the first time they have had the opportunity to win seats in the federal parliament.

The Kremlin has established a quota for veterans, not a veterans’ lobby. The ideal candidate is a veteran loyal to the administration and politically inexperienced: a background, not a voter base. Nor is any particular background ruled out. Vladislav Golovin, aged 29, commanded a marine infantry platoon in Mariupol, where he was wounded; he completed the ‘Time of Heroes’ programme and now tops the national list for ‘United Russia’ alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin; Kyiv is seeking him on charges of war crimes.

Eduard Shonov, who features on the party’s Moscow list, is a former special forces soldier who took part in the occupation of the Kyiv region and may have been involved in war crimes in Bucha. These past deeds constitute their credentials. Complicity binds people more strongly than ideology and never requires a pay rise.

Other ‘veterans’ are already established political figures, whose CVs have been bolstered by military experience. In both cases, the Kremlin wants veterans it can control, not military personnel who might act on their own initiative. They are integrated into Putin’s regime without Putinism itself changing. In this way, the war is destined to continue politically as soon as the fighting ceases.

"United Russia" presents itself both as Putin’s war party and as the party that protects Russians from war, using them as a shield. Its two main candidates are running two different campaigns: Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, dismisses calls to put the economy on a war footing as pointless and promises an exhausted public that nothing will change, whilst Putin tells that same public that the “heroes of the special military operation” have made the Russian people realise what Russia truly means.

The old formula was stability, packaged as election pledges — roads, schools, infrastructure — timed to coincide with the elections. But this formula has had its day: budgets are in the red and even in Moscow, schools and clinics are being merged.

This is a case of ‘negative stability’. The Kremlin can no longer afford the normality it is required to project; it can, however, stage and control it — hence the restrictions on messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as the crackdown on VPNs. The war is already influencing the elections: Communist MPs are now openly stating that the economy cannot withstand a protracted war.

Kyiv’s attacks on Russian territory are redrawing the geography of uncertainty and, in the occupied territories, are preventing Moscow from normalising the annexation — a process that the new electoral constituencies are intended to legitimise. During this summer’s petrol crisis, Putin openly rejected Zelensky’s offer of a reciprocal moratorium on attacks on the hinterland: the decision to keep the war in the spotlight rests with him — contrary to the instincts of his own party list.

The Kremlin is using the elections to ‘disguise’ the war and the annexation within the context of normal political biographies. The West should reject this ‘disguise’: any member of parliament elected from the occupied territories or through the quota reserved for veterans should be blacklisted on the very day the results are announced and remain so for the entire duration of their term of office.