In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a man who fought in Ukraine is not supposed to return as an ordinary veteran. In the Kremlin’s projection, he is a hero and, potentially, a member of the country’s next ruling class. In his 2024 address to the Federal Assembly, Putin called participants in the “special military operation” Russia’s “true elite” and said they should move into leading positions in government, business and education. The Time of Heroes program made that promise visible: more than 44,000 people applied for its first intake, but only 83 were selected.
That program can manufacture exemplars. It cannot reintegrate a mass constituency. As Riddle Russia has documented, Russia’s recruitment bargain rests on “deathonomics”: exceptional salaries, signing bonuses and compensation have made enlistment transformative for men from poorer regions. But the bargain offered has three parts. Money recruits. Public honor legitimizes sacrifice. Civilian employment turns service into a future.
The future job is the part the Kremlin cannot simply announce into existence.
A one-line test
A field experiment conducted between May and August 2025 tested what happened when the state’s heroic credential became one ordinary civilian signal: a line on a CV.
The study sent 120 fictitious applications, arranged in 60 matched pairs, to real vacancies on hh.ru and SuperJob. The vacancies spanned retail, logistics, IT, administration and manufacturing across Moscow, St Petersburg and smaller localities. Applicants were men aged 25 to 35 with closely matched education and work experience. Three Russian human-resources professionals reviewed a random subset—not all 120 applications—and judged those CVs indistinguishable from genuine ones.
Only the military-service line changed. One applicant reported a voluntary contract during the “special military operation” in 2022−2023. The other reported routine mandatory conscription in the same period. Both listed the rank of private and similar duties.
The result was stark. Conscription applicants received 33 positive responses from 60 applications, a callback rate of 55.0%. Applicants disclosing voluntary war service received 22, or 36.7%. The volunteer profile attracted exactly one-third fewer callbacks.
This was not a test of veterans against civilians, or of military experience in general. Both applicants presented service in the Russian Armed Forces. The experiment isolated the extra meaning attached to one fact: this man had chosen to join this war.
Vertical honor, horizontal distrust
The Kremlin’s language compresses different routes into service. Career soldiers, mobilized reservists, contract recruits and volunteers can all be folded into the honorable category of “participants in the SVO”. Employers appear to preserve a distinction that official rhetoric tries to flatten: between obligation and agency, or between performing a familiar civic duty and voluntarily entering the Ukraine campaign.
Callbacks cannot reveal why. Employers may infer greater exposure to violence or trauma, worry about workplace adjustment or discipline, associate voluntary enlistment with financial desperation or ideological zeal, or wish to avoid reputational complications. Quite political distancing from the invasion is another possibility.
The result is therefore not proof of hidden anti-war sentiment. A regime loyalist and a private opponent could reject the same applicant for different reasons. What the possible explanations share is more revealing: the state’s heroic signal did not dominate the employer’s calculation.
Reintegration by decree—and by region
The Russian government’s own actions suggest that it does not expect prestige to do the work. In May 2025, as the experiment began, it approved a national employment plan for war participants. It called for proactive contact with returnees, regional vacancy databases, reserved public-sector positions, mentoring, retraining, workplace adaptation and possible employer incentives.
Newer official figures show both activity and opacity. In March 2026, Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov said that more than 55% of returned fighters were employed or developing a business. In December 2025, the Defenders of the Fatherland fund said that more than 66% of the 16,500 veterans and family members seeking its employment help had obtained work. The figures are not directly comparable: one covers returnees broadly, the other service users and relatives. Neither reveals pay, permanence or skill match. A placement is not necessarily a good job.
Veteran organizations make a similar distinction. In July 2026, the head of the SVO Veterans Association in Tatarstan said that veterans needed not only jobs but social inclusion, and often trusted people who had travelled the same path. Its Tambov branch described employment and training opportunities as infrastructure that must be built before most fighters return. This does not prove mass exclusion. It shows that work is treated as a central reintegration problem, not an automatic reward for service.
Instead of a single nationwide private-sector quota, Russia has developed a regional patchwork. Vologda requires employers with more than 100 workers to reserve 1% of positions, and at least one job, for people who have completed military service; the rule began in September 2025. Karelia uses a similar 1% threshold for employers with more than 100 staff. Moscow Region requires firms with more than 200 employees to hire one combat veteran. Tatarstan’s law will require employers with more than 200 staff to reserve 1% of jobs from September 2026. Other regions use different categories, subsidies, job reserves or placement programs.
The experiment ran before most of this patchwork took effect. Its callback gap is best read as employer preference before administrative pressure became widespread. In a quota region, a later callback may record compliance as much as respect. Quotas can open a workplace door; they cannot show whether the heroic meaning attached to the applicant is socially believed.
Not a uniquely Russian problem
Veteran employment friction is not unique to Russia. A 2025 Ukrainian Veterans Fund study found that more than half of surveyed veterans had encountered employment barriers. Employers were often positive in principle—more than 40% said they would prefer a veteran when qualifications were equal—but a third had no veteran-support program or considered existing measures ineffective. Even where service has much stronger public legitimacy, health limitations, skill translation, workplace adaptation and stereotypes can obstruct employment.
The United States offers another comparison. In 2025, unemployment among post-9/11 veterans was 3.6%; male veterans in that group had lower unemployment than male non-veterans. Yet US research still identifies the translation of military experience into civilian language and suitably matched careers as a persistent problem. Legal protections, education benefits, specialist services and public-sector pathways coexist with difficult transitions.
Russia’s result is distinctive not because Russian veterans alone face barriers, but because of the comparison inside the experiment. It did not detect a general veteran disadvantage. It detected an additional penalty for signaling the voluntary choice to join this war rather than routine conscription. No evidence cited here establishes the same agency effect in Ukraine or the United States.
A wider warning
The evidence remains bounded. It covers 60 vacancies, two platforms and four months in 2025. It represents online hiring, not personal networks, defense enterprises, state placement or concealed service. The volunteer line may have conveyed both personal agency and likely combat exposure. The study cannot identify employers’ motives or show that every veteran is penalized.
Even so, the direction is striking. During the fieldwork, Russian unemployment was at an all-time low of about 2.2%, amid acute labor shortages. That should have been favorable terrain for a credential presented as evidence of courage, discipline and patriotism. Instead, otherwise comparable volunteers received roughly one-third fewer callbacks.
The political conclusion is not that Russia secretly opposes the war. It is that the Kremlin can flatten distinctions in official speech while civilian behavior restores them. Employers appear to distinguish between service and choice, and between wearing a uniform and volunteering for this campaign. Regional quotas may suppress the visible consequence of that distinction but may also conceal rather than erase it.
Russia is trying to construct a durable veteran order out of money, honor and privileged access. Its weak link is ordinary social recognition. The state can award medals, reserve vacancies and place selected veterans in office. It can compel an employer to make a hire. It cannot compel the employer to attach the meaning to wartime service that the Kremlin demands.
Author’s note: This article is based on a research note published in the Journal of Peace Research. The data, code and online appendix are archived on Zenodo.
