How the Ukraine War Is Changing Russian Society

“I once received an order, but I didn’t obey it,” Igor Shchetko told Deutsche Welle. The former soldier of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces wonders why others couldn’t do the same. After Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began, he defected, believing he could not escape conscription. In 2021, a year before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Shchetko had signed a contract to serve for two years. His decision was also triggered by the suicide of a conscript in his unit. Shchetko himself found the soldier’s body. After the incident, he was placed in a psychiatric ward of a hospital and tried to be discharged from military service on health grounds. However, instead of being discharged, he was ordered to transfer to an assault brigade. “When I found out I was going to be sent to the combat zone, I realised that under no circumstances would I fight,” Shchetko recounted. A few days later, he fled Russia for Armenia, then continued his journey to the European Union.

Human rights activist Sergei Krivenko has spent years fighting for the rights of military personnel. He estimates that around 60,000 Russian soldiers have left their units or refused to participate in combat operations. According to him, not all are cases of desertion in the classic sense; some soldiers hide within Russia or try to obtain medical certificates stating they are unfit for service. Krivenko says more than 20,000 criminal proceedings have been opened in Russia related to absence without leave, desertion, and refusal to fight. Those who refuse to fight are considered to have committed a criminal offence. Igor Shchetko says that if he were extradited to Russia, he could face a 15-year prison sentence or be forced to serve on the front line.

According to Sergei Krivenko, since 2023 the Russian military has primarily recruited new soldiers through contracts offering lucrative financial rewards. However, it is not only volunteers who are recruited. Among the contract soldiers are prisoners, migrants, people in debt, conscripts, and residents from economically weak regions. Many choose to join the military due to financial problems or because they have no other alternative. At the same time, the state is strengthening paramilitary training in schools and universities through various so-called patriotic programmes. Observers stress that the Russian military should not be viewed solely as a collection of people who happen to be there for money or other reasons. A member of the Russian Volunteer Corps fighting on Ukraine’s side, using the pseudonym “Kasper”, warns that besides troops considered “cannon fodder”, the Russian military also has well-trained and highly motivated units.

Anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova describes a culture of everyday violence within the military. Together with colleagues, she collected testimonies from Russian soldiers, deserters, and their families. One result of their research is a “war dictionary” containing slang terms from the front line that reflect life inside the Russian military. According to Arkhipova, many of these terms relate to surveillance, punishment, and the struggle for survival. For example, the term “birdhouse” is used for drone operators who not only monitor the enemy but also watch their own comrades and can even fire on those trying to retreat. The term “pit” refers to temporary illegal detention and punishment sites. Meanwhile, “quarantine” refers to bases where Russian soldiers returning from Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camps are interrogated by the Russian Federal Security Service before being sent back to the front line. “There is no way home,” Arkhipova stressed. According to her, as the war has dragged on for years, it has become increasingly difficult for soldiers to return to civilian life. Many soldiers now see severe injury, arrest, desertion, or even death as the only “way out”. Furthermore, a kind of black market for survival has developed within the military. Arkhipova says soldiers pay thousands of dollars for leave, to be transferred from the front line, or to avoid assignment to assault units. Medical certificates can also be bought, and commanders are bribed to allow someone to leave their unit temporarily. Arkhipova particularly noted that the attitude towards human life within the forces has changed. Many respondents describe the front line as a place where people are no longer seen as individuals but as expendable resources. In such a system, the military command needs a constant flow of new personnel to replace losses, she explained.

Journalist Alexei Tupitsyn observes that the war is also changing Russian society, gradually becoming part of everyday life and, for some families, a source of income. When mobilisation began, Tupitsyn and his colleagues created chat rooms for the wives of mobilised soldiers and for the soldiers themselves. Based on his observations, the anonymous chat rooms were initially filled with fear and a desire to bring family members home. But over time, the war turned into a stable source of income for many families. “The wives of mobilised soldiers can now be said to belong to the middle class,” he noted.