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In his article, The Impact of the Special Military Operation on Crime in Russia, law professor Villiy Maslov analyzes conviction statistics from 2019 to 2023, drawing on data from the Supreme Court’s Judicial Department, Russia’s Federal Statistics Service, and the Federal Penitentiary Service. He writes: “It can be confidently stated that the ‘special military operation’ has already impacted every Russian citizen. […] Its continuation is already influencing the country’s criminal landscape and will inevitably exacerbate crime problems in the future.”
Maslov writes that repeat offenses by former inmates pose one of the biggest risks to public safety. The exact number of convicts pardoned for participating in the war is unknown. Maslov estimates their number ranges from several thousand to several tens of thousands — a “substantial number,” he says, that includes men convicted of grave and violent crimes. Maslov describes the release of convicted murderers as particularly troubling.
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Russia’s crime rates may also increase because, after returning from the front, some soldiers are unwilling to take jobs where they would earn significantly less than in the army. Not everyone will turn to crime in pursuit of “easy money,” but a number of veterans have already been convicted of robbery and theft.
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Another factor that could contribute to rising crime rates, says Maslov, is that veterans acquire skills in war that are “not especially in demand by the state in peacetime, but may be valued in the criminal world.” He specifically highlights the risk of more crimes involving the use of guns:
Given [soldiers’] acquired experience, the availability of weapons, escalating illicit firearms trafficking, and the transformation of moral-psychological frameworks among individuals subjected to combat stress conditions (including PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder), we cannot rule out a rise in mass shootings and other mass killings using firearms.
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