Crime and corruption explode in rural Russia amid Ukraine war

"Violence doesn't just spread outward—it comes home," Alexander Kupatadze, a criminologist at King's College London, wrote about Russia in Mar. of this year. Together with Erica Marat, a researcher from Georgetown University in Washington, he took a detailed look at the topic of severe crimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The researchers, who published their UK Foreign Office-funded work for the SOC ACE program at the University of Birmingham, analyzed international databases, trade flows, judicial statistics, and conducted interviews. They concluded that among all of Ukraine's neighbors, Russia has seen the largest spike in severe crimes in recent years, occurring amid the war unleashed by Moscow.

A wave of violence

A former mercenary who fought in Ukraine beat his wife to death with a vodka bottle in Kyakhta, a town on the border of Russian Buryatia and Mongolia, on Sept. 23, 2025. The man had an amputated foot, combat awards, and "combat veteran" status; his wife supported the family while he was at the front. Following the murder, the "SMO veteran" poured water over her and went to a friend's place.

The court sentenced the criminal to nine years. The mercenary appealed the verdict—claiming it was too harsh and that "the wife was cheating." In his appeal, he asked to be sent back to the front.

This case has become just one of thousands of examples of violence returning from the front in Ukraine to the Russian heartland.

Even official Russian statistics cannot deny the obvious.

Russian Interior Ministry registered a 14-year record number of severe and particularly severe crimes in the aggressor country in 2024 — over 617,000. Meanwhile, the number of murders in Russia increased for the first time in 20 years by 4% in 2022, the year of the full-scale invasion. In the Belgorod Oblast, which borders Ukraine, the number of murders and attempted murders doubled over the year — from 52 to 102 cases, while in neighboring Kursk, it jumped from 58 to 89.

"We often assume that invasion exports instability. But the data shows otherwise," Kupatadze wrote when presenting the study. "Russia has experienced the largest increase in severe crime among all of Ukraine's neighbors. And crime is no longer confined to major cities: it is creeping into the periphery."

Kupatadze and Marat study, built in part on the global event and news databases GDELT and POLECAT, proved that a wave of crimes hit Russia in 2022, and only a fraction of them made it into official statistics. For instance, the number of recorded events related to arms trafficking within Russia increased tenfold—from 25 in 2021 to 254 in 2022. Incidents of drug trafficking, organized crime group activities, and human trafficking doubled.

"A large-scale conflict doesn't just move organized crime across borders — it reorganizes it simultaneously in multiple dimensions," Kupatadze and Marat explain.

Until 2022, criminal activity in Russia was concentrated, according to the researchers' estimates, where it was expected — in major cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it began to spread — the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. New hotbeds of severe crimes — Bashkortostan, Krasnodar Krai, Tatarstan, Buryatia, Dagestan, Yakutia — appeared precisely in those regions that were already socially and economically marginalized, and lost a disproportionately large number of men during the war due to overt and covert mobilization. That is, Putin's aggression first took men from the periphery and then returned them traumatized, armed, and without any support system.

"The massive return of armed, traumatized, and criminalized war participants has led to a sharp increase in domestic violence," Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) stated in December 2025.

In parallel, according to POLECAT data, the state's repressive activity also rose sharply: the number of arrests across Russia jumped from about 1,500 per year to over 5,000.

A significant portion of these were manifestations of suppressing dissent: the number of "extremist" cases in Russia increased by a third in 2025, and "terrorist" cases by almost 60%. The UK-American team of researchers explained: Russia is becoming more criminalized and, at the same time, more repressive. And these two processes feed off each other.

Why is this happening? Kupatadze and Marat identify five drivers.

The police have become weaker: its officers are leaving the service en masse for the front, where they are paid more, and local departments are operating with chronic staff shortages.

Violence has become the norm: a society that watches war channels daily reacts differently to beatings and murders.

Sanctions and the disruption of trade routes have created new black markets — from fuel smuggling to money laundering through gold and tobacco.

The war economy has spawned an entire ecosystem of profiteering.

And, finally, the main driver is the return of mercenaries.

This is where the statistics become truly chilling. For example, "Vyorstka," one of the few independent Russian publications still operating, calculated: as of December 2025, mercenaries returning from the front have killed or seriously maimed at least 1,016 people in Russia itself: 551 people were killed, and 465 suffered severe injuries. More than half of the murders were committed by former inmates recruited for the war for money.

"The return of Russian mercenaries will bring banditry, crime, and illegal arms trafficking," Ukrainian analyst Dmytro Zhmailo warned earlier in a comment to the Kyiv Post. Judicial statistics confirm this forecast.

Novaya Gazeta Europe, a Russian publication in exile, found 8,000 sentences since 2022 involving participants of the so-called "SMO": at least one in 16 of those officially returned home has already managed to receive a court ruling.

An analysis of court cases yields even more telling figures: while 21 murder cases involving military personnel were submitted to Russian garrison military courts in 2021, there were 352 in 2025; rape cases numbered 30 and 116, respectively. And in the vast majority of cases, the victims were friends, acquaintances, relatives, and random civilians.

Domestic violence has turned into a separate phenomenon. According to data submitted by Russia itself to the UN, 963 Russian women died from this type of crime in 2024 — the highest annual figure in the last 15 years.

At the same time, the real picture is most likely even worse. According to independent human rights defenders, current Russian legislation allows those accused of beatings, kidnappings, and even death threats to sign a contract with the army and go to the front, after which the criminal cases are suspended or closed. Only 60-70% of verdict texts on violence cases are published in Russia, and military courts intentionally hide some decisions. The war simultaneously generates new violence and "washes" it out of official statistics.

As the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine once explained: those returning from the front are "not romanticized heroes, but people with weapons." And Russia is only beginning to realize the scale of the threat they pose.

A country is afraid of its 'heroes'

The criminalization of Russia from within is a topic that has been noticed outside academic institutions as well. Mark Galeotti, arguably the most famous UK researcher of Russian organized crime, was one of the first to speak about it.

He published a report for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime in Jun. 2025 that now reads like a warning.

Russia is facing a "growing internal security threat," Galeotti wrote. The return of mercenaries is "driving a surge in violence, social instability, and organized crime." He estimates that about 250,000 people who have gone through the war may suffer from PTSD, and support systems are fragmented or completely absent.

Galeotti compared what is happening to the "Afghan syndrome" and the "Chechen syndrome" — waves of crime, addictions, and social alienation among participants of Russia's previous wars. But he emphasized: the current scale is unprecedented, the weapons are deadlier, and the contingent is significantly more criminalized.

UK military intelligence reported back in March 2023: the return of a large number of former criminals with combat experience "will likely present a significant challenge for Russian society."

Margarete Klein, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), stated the same thing at the time: the number of violent crimes has increased since the full-scale invasion.

Mariana Katzarova, a Bulgarian human rights defender and the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, stated in Sep. 2024: former convicts recruited for the war "commit new violent crimes" upon return — and directly linked this to the rise in violence against women, girls, and children. According to her assessment, the Kremlin recruited about 170,000 people convicted specifically of violent crimes for the war. They were first sent to kill abroad, and then brought home — with money, weapons, and a presidential pardon.

Kupatadze and Marat study concludes with a message aimed primarily at Western governments: post-war Russia will remain "highly criminalized and increasingly reliant on coercion," with crime and repression transforming from side effects of the war into built-in tools of governance.

Bloomberg Economics estimated Russia's potential economic losses from the crime surge as follows: from 0.2% of GDP if the war ends quickly to 0.6% if it continues for another five years.

Levada Center, the last relatively "independent" sociological service in Russia, surveyed Russians last fall. And 39% of respondents answered that they expect an increase in conflicts and crime after war participants return home.

The boomerang is already coming back.