No time for heroes?
07.12.2025
Official Russian propaganda insists that participants in the war in Ukraine are becoming the country’s new elite. They are being pushed into public politics, promoted through management competitions, and elected en masse to local councils.
In reality, however, the system functions more as a personnel funnel for the most obedient rather than an elevator for strong and independent figures. Political strategists who work on the Time of Heroes program have been instructed to select candidates who are as neutral and dependent as possible — and, above all, who lack the aura of genuine military glory. The Kremlin is in fact wary of charismatic commanders who could return from the front with enough public authority to challenge the president.
These concerns are detailed in a recent report by Verstka (original article in Russian is available here). REM presents an abridged translation.
Political nobodies
The Time of Heroes program was developed by the Kremlin and is presented as an upward mobility mechanism for war participants. But the program has a hidden purpose: to filter out figures who could transform their frontline reputation into an independent political base. As a result, Time of Heroes selects people who pose no political risk to the Kremlin. And while the vast majority of graduates do receive government posts, these positions tend to be highly visible yet carry little real political weight [REM has previously reported on this: How Russia's power vertical resists career advancement of the “special military operation” participants].
“These have to be the most ordinary, not very ambitious people”, a staff member of the program told Verstka. “Of course, without criminal records, so that no one can say such people are being promoted on purpose. But in general, just calm, typical Russian men”. It appears that the Kremlin fears the emergence of publicly popular military figures in Russia — such as General Aleksandr Lebed (who ran for president in 1996 and won more than 14%) or former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi. According to Verstka’s sources, these fears intensified after the armed mutiny led by Wagner PMC head Yevgeny Prigozhin.
As a result, Russia’s “new elite” has no striking names or recognizable faces. “Stop a person in the street and ask them to name any of the ‘war heroes’. They are unlikely to name even one. City streets are covered with billboards displaying these names, but we know nothing about any of them. People look at the posters and don’t even know whether these men are alive or dead”, a political technologist laments.
The few existing exceptions only prove the general rule. Among the few known examples is Artyom Zhoga, the presidential envoy to the Ural Federal District. He not only took part in the war himself but also lost his son there. He is also known for publicly “asking” Putin in December 2023 to run for president again. Yet Zhoga’s role is widely seen as purely nominal, and the envoy position itself carries neither administrative authority nor budgetary resources.
Another high-profile appointment of a “veteran of the special military operation”, Yevgeny Pervyshov, to a governor’s post seems like an exception only at first glance. Pervyshov can hardly be described as an ordinary mobilized soldier — he is an experienced bureaucrat, a former mayor of Krasnodar, has worked at the Ministry of Construction, and has served as a State Duma deputy. His military service was in the volunteer formation Bars Kaskad, which experts describe as an elite unit where service was safe and far from the front line.
Aiming for deputies — but only from the "right" party
For the most part, military veterans are steered toward low-level positions that require neither real responsibility nor independence. “We can easily get veterans elected as deputies or even chairs of regional parliaments”, a senior official in a regional administration told Verstka. “But when it comes to serious executive posts, the decision is to wait”.
Program staff complain that it is extremely difficult to turn military personnel into public political figures. “Vasya from the trenches can barely string two words together. For him, politics is just a way not to return to that hell. He understands neither laws nor regulations, nor why the media even exist”. Many require weeks of one-on-one coaching just to learn how to communicate with people — whether voters or journalists. Future politicians are given lectures on business style, personal image, and public speaking.
Those few who are selected for executive positions are assigned experienced, high-ranking supervisors responsible for their performance. One example is Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Krivshenko, who was appointed deputy minister of education and science of Krasnodar Krai. This was not accidental: among other things, Krivshenko previously served with Anatoly Chepiga, one of the officers implicated in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with Novichok in 2018 in Salisbury. According to a source, responsibility for Krivshenko “will lie personally with [Krasnodar governor] Veniamin Kondratyev”, who was officially appointed his mentor in the program.
Most participants, according to a Time of Heroes staff member, are passive and “harmless”, but supervisors must ensure that “nothing goes wrong if a person gets carried away with their new status, has too much to drink, or gets into a conflict”.
If incidents with servicemen occur, their supervisors are held accountable, says an employee of the Time of Heroes program. Further PR is handled locally. For example, when program graduates took part in United Russia’s primaries, they received support from party offices. Among other things, staff helped them record short campaign videos: standing against a backdrop of flags, the former soldiers read from a teleprompter a standard script outlining their biography and their motivation for running for office.
But if a ‘veteran’ shows signs of becoming a genuinely independent political actor, their career prospects may be blocked — especially if they do not belong to the ruling party. This is what happened, for example, to a war veteran Alexander Sherin. Sherin was a State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) for two terms, and was quite influential and prominent, maintaining good relations with party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. However, in 2022 he was expelled from the LDPR after attempting to run for party chairman and losing to the Kremlin-backed Leonid Slutsky. After taking part in the “special military operation”, Lieutenant Colonel Sherin ran (this time with the Just Russia party, which took him in) for the regional parliament of his home Ryazan region, where he was well-known but lost to United Russia member Dmitry Repnikov. After the election, Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov publicly complained that “veterans from the wrong party” are being shut out of politics.
A thousand "veterans" have dissolved into Russian politics. Some ended up in prison
Real-world cases show that as soon as a military officer (or a pro-army influencer) steps outside the boundaries of controlled loyalty, the security apparatus shifts into punitive mode. After Prigozhin’s mutiny, General Sergei Surovikin, seen as close to him, was removed from his post as commander of the Aerospace Forces. There is no official information about him, but media reports have suggested Surovikin may now be leading a group of Russian military advisers in Algeria.
Another example is the former commander of the 58th Army, Ivan Popov, who gained popularity after sharply criticizing logistics and command failures of the army. In 2024, he was arrested on fraud charges, and in April 2025 sentenced to five years in prison. The case of the “Donbas hero” Igor Girkin (Strelkov) also fits this pattern, although he was persecuted not as a career officer but as a blogger and political figure. A cult icon for ultranationalists, Girkin was sentenced in January 2024 to four years for extremism after publicly criticizing the Kremlin.
At the municipal level, one notable case is Nikita Gorelov, mayor of Sosnovka in the Kirov region. Shortly after taking office, he announced he had evidence of corruption and financial misconduct in the local administration. Authorities immediately threatened to send him back to the front, but after local protests he was allowed to remain in office. Since then, Gorelov has largely disappeared from the news. Although he still continues to post critical comments on his channel, he has avoided making sharp political statements.
After Sosnovka, there have been no other high-profile, successful, or influential political actions by veterans who won office. Yet more than 1,000 servicemen were elected in the most recent cycle of the Unified Election Day.
“In a context of demobilization and the return of tens of thousands of people with experience of violence, any truly popular military figure can become a center of gravity for the resentful, the marginalized, and the radicalized”, a political scientist who requested anonymity told Verstka. “This is why the personnel policy follows the principle of ‘broad but quiet’: thousands of veterans at the grassroots level, and not a single charismatic figure at the top”.
Upward mobility for "veterans" is still possible
In his column for The Moscow Times, political scientist and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Mikhail Komin points to several examples of career advancement among the “veterans”. He notes that nearly 60% of the participants in the Time of Heroes program — 49 out of 83 — have received government posts, and five have already been promoted, moving from regional positions to federal ones. They now work in the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Sport, the commission for veterans’ affairs, and similar institutions.
Most of the roles given to program participants — roughly 80% — are tied either to ideology or to supporting the “special military operation”. This likely reflects how the Kremlin imagines the role of the “new elite”: to mitigate discontent among returning servicemen once the war ends.
“Given that such upward career moves do occur — and occur fairly quickly — the initial, low-level appointments should be seen as temporary”, Komin concludes. “If appointees manage to prove themselves, or at least avoid failure, further career advancement may follow: from the regions to Moscow, or from the legislative to the executive branch”.
