The veterans who worry Putin

Summary

Podcast Summary: Click Here – “The Veterans Who Worry Putin”

Recorded Future News | September 5, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Guest: Katerina Stepanenko, Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the emerging threat to Vladimir Putin’s regime: the growing ranks of Russian military veterans returning from the war in Ukraine. Through an in-depth interview with Katerina Stepanenko, the podcast unpacks how these veterans’ personal stories contradict the Kremlin’s narrative, fueling unrest and anxiety within Russia. The discussion examines the Kremlin’s attempts to control the information space, historical parallels with the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan War, and the government’s strategies—ranging from incentives to repression—to prevent these veterans from becoming a destabilizing force.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rising Dissent Among Russian Veterans

• Thousands of soldiers are returning from Ukraine, sharing real battlefield experiences that clash with official Kremlin propaganda.

  • “Each month, thousands of soldiers are returning to their homes with stories of what's really unfolding on the battlefields...that doesn’t sound like the Kremlin's version of events.” (00:46 – Dena Temple-Raston)

• Online platforms like Telegram have amplified criticism against Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

  • “There was a lot of criticism that was emerging on Russian telegram channels, and it actually gave a rise to individuals, Russian servicemen, to go against the Russian Ministry of Defense.” (01:07 – Katerina Stepanenko)

2. The Digital Front: Propaganda, Social Media, and Cognitive Warfare

• The war’s “second front” is information, where figures like Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin weaponized social media to challenge the Kremlin.

  • “Prigozhin understood the power of social media in a way that the Kremlin didn’t...to push for policies he thought would help win the war.” (02:24 – Dena Temple-Raston)

• The Kremlin has reverted to old Soviet-era strategies, particularly “reflexive control theory,” to manipulate public perception.

  • "It's actually a Soviet theory called the reflexive control theory, in which Russians argue that they can use a variety of different means to convince and change someone's perception to accomplish their own strategic goals." (04:01 – Katerina Stepanenko)

• Stepanenko frames this as “cognitive warfare,” a deeper manipulation that shapes thought before realization.

  • “My passion project...is defining and really understanding how adversaries use cognitive warfare to influence our decision makers.” (04:26 – Katerina Stepanenko)
  • “Cognitive warfare is more than propaganda, more than censorship. It’s manipulation on a deeper level...creating a reality where facts feel fluid and trust erodes.” (04:43 – Dena Temple-Raston)

3. The Kremlin Tightens Information Control

• Increased censorship: pro-war bloggers and even commanders have been silenced, restricted, or punished.

  • “Bloggers who were once driving right up to the battlefield...are now being prohibited.” (06:15 – Dena Temple-Raston)
  • “They can’t report on what’s going on on the front lines and the atrocities that they see...” (06:28 – Katerina Stepanenko)

• The fates of Prigozhin and high-profile critics like General Ivan Popov show the risks of public dissent:

  • “The Kremlin...fired some commanders that tried to use a similar tactic to blackmail the Kremlin into making command changes.” (07:14 – Katerina Stepanenko)
  • “I called a spade a spade.” (07:46 – News Reporter, quoting Ivan Popov)

4. Historical Parallels: The Dangerous Potential of Disillusioned Veterans

• The regime is haunted by the 1990s, when Afghan war veterans returned traumatized, became organized, and formed communities the government couldn’t control, fueling crime and unrest.

  • “The last time Moscow faced a wave of disillusioned veterans...the country unraveled into crime, chaos and humiliation. And the Kremlin worries that could happen again.” (09:03 – Dena Temple-Raston)

• Putin’s personal memory of this era heightens his anxiety about the possible return of some 700,000 soldiers if the Ukraine war ends.

  • “Putin...lived through the devastating 1990s...plagued by Afghan war servicemen coming back with psychological trauma, with no prospects, no jobs, and turning to crime.” (10:18 – Katerina Stepanenko)

5. The Kremlin’s Two-Pronged Strategy: Co-optation and Suppression

• To pre-empt unrest, Moscow is buying veterans’ loyalty—offering payments, debt relief, education funds, and significant perks.

  • “The Kremlin has set up a fund for returning soldiers, including some $126 million...debt relief, education funds, sweeteners...” (12:26 – Dena Temple-Raston)

• Simultaneously, it restricts independent veterans’ organizations and replaces them with state-run, pro-war patriotic groups.

  • “The more that you tie them to the state and give them advantages with the state, the less these veteran communities or servicemen would actually be vocal...” (12:45 – Katerina Stepanenko)
  • “Eliminate civil societies and replace them with pro Russian, pro war military patriotic organizations deliberately...” (13:20 – Katerina Stepanenko)
  • “The Kremlin rolled out the svo, a state run veterans club, a kind of Russian vfw, and the goal isn’t subtle.” (13:49 – Dena Temple-Raston)

• For those still fighting, the military explores ways to keep them in service indefinitely—effectively preventing potential dissenters from returning home or organizing.

  • “We...saw the Russian Ministry of Defense sending around a survey...asking how many would be interested in signing up for a contract service. That means the Kremlin could essentially keep them for as long as they want.” (14:34 – Katerina Stepanenko)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Cognitive warfare is more than propaganda, more than censorship. It’s manipulation on a deeper level...creating a reality where facts feel fluid and trust erodes.”
  — Dena Temple-Raston (04:43)

• “If they come back en masse and they form, you know, a civil society around their grievances, then...the Kremlin probably wouldn't be able to sustain the regime.”
  — Katerina Stepanenko (11:32)

• “The logic is brutal. You can't protest or organize if you never come home.”
  — Dena Temple-Raston (14:57)

• “The more that you tie them to the state and give them advantages with the state, the less these veteran communities or servicemen would actually be vocal about their experience in the war.”
  — Katerina Stepanenko (12:45)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:07 – Stepanenko on rising criticism within Russian Telegram channels
• 03:18 – Prigozhin’s use of social media as blackmail
• 04:01 – Reflexive control theory and cognitive warfare
• 06:15–06:37 – Kremlin crackdown on battlefield reporting and bloggers
• 07:37–08:13 – Case study: General Ivan Popov’s public dissent and dismissal
• 09:03–09:29 – The Afghan war veteran parallel and Kremlin fears
• 10:18–10:44 – Putin’s memory of post-Afghan war chaos
• 12:26–13:20 – Kremlin’s loyalty payouts and creation of patriotic veterans’ groups
• 14:34 – MOD strategy to keep soldiers from returning

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Conclusion

The episode paints a vivid picture of Russia’s hidden crisis: a generation of war veterans whose lived experiences directly challenge the regime’s preferred narrative. The Kremlin’s efforts—from digital censorship and narrative management to financial co-optation and organizational suppression—reveal its deep anxiety over the destabilizing power of returning soldiers. The conversation ends on a chilling note, suggesting the war continues not just in trenches, but in the minds and living rooms of Russians, where silence and fear prevail.

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For those who want an insider’s look at how authoritarian regimes seek to manage uncomfortable truths, and why veteran voices scare Putin more than foreign adversaries ever could, this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[Katerina Stepanenko]

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[Dena Temple-Raston]

From recorded future news and prx. I'm Dena Temple Raston, and this is Click. Here's Mic Drop, an extended cut of our favorite interview of the week. Our guest today is Katerina Stepanenko. She's a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War. And you're from Kyiv, right?

[Katerina Stepanenko]

I am from Kyiv, yes. I was born there, but raised in New York.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

So you sound nothing like a New Yorker, and that's a compliment. Where in New York? The city.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

The Bronx.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

The Bronx. You sound nothing like the Bronx. And we wanted to talk to her about this quiet descent that's rising in Russia. Each month, thousands of soldiers are returning to their homes with stories of what's really unfolding on the battlefields of Ukraine. And what they're saying doesn't sound like the Kremlin's version of events.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

There was a lot of criticism that was emerging on Russian telegram channels, and it actually gave a rise to individuals, Russian servicemen, to go against the Russian Ministry of Defense.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

It started as a murmur online, but those murmurs are turning into something else, a chorus that Vladimir Putin can't quite tune out, and that has Putin worried. Stay with us.

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[News Reporter]

Here we go. It started before dawn. Ukraine woke to explosions around the little.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Kiev.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

Last several hours.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Russia has invaded Ukraine advancing. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, analysts expected the war to be quick. They said Kyiv would fall in a matter of days. But the war dragged on. Casualties mounted, and a new front opened, not in the trenches, but online. And as we reported on Tuesday, nobody waged that war better than Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brash leader of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin understood the power of social media in a way that the Kremlin didn't. And Katerina says he used that power to put the Kremlin on the defensive, to try to push for policies he thought would help win the war.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

He carried over that experience to actually blackmailing the Kremlin. Using social media, complaining publicly about veteran issues, and saying, you know, that Russia can never win this war or that Russia needs significant restructuring of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

For Putin, it was more than an embarrassment. It was a crack in the facade of power.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

Kremlin's objective has always been to portray itself as powerful and that it could outlast Ukraine's will to resist Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

So the Kremlin reached out for an old playbook, one from the Soviet era.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

It's actually a Soviet theory called the reflexive control theory, in which Russians argue that they can use a variety of different means to convince and change someone's perception to accomplish their own strategic goals.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Though Katerina has another name for it. Cognitive warfare.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

My passion project personally, is defining and really understanding how adversaries use crime cognitive warfare to influence our decision makers.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Cognitive warfare is more than propaganda, more than censorship. It's manipulation on a deeper level, shaping what you think before you even realize you're thinking it. It uses everything from social media algorithms to conspiracy theories, creating a reality where facts feel fluid and trust erodes.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

So for the Kremlin, one of the biggest issues that they have facing them is that protracted war in Ukraine, or possibly against NATO, can cause a lot of people to be upset in Russia. There could be grievance over the fact that there's sanctions and Russians are losing access to Western goods that they liked, or, you know, they have to increasingly bear the toll of losing loved ones on the battlefield.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Cognitive warfare is designed to keep those grievances from taking root, so the Kremlin can still convince Russians to do what they want.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

Public opinion is extremely important for things like recruitment or general support for the Kremlin's vision and especially for the economy and how the Russians are essentially being asked to take more economic sacrifices every. Every year with the Kremlin's war objectives.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

So the Kremlin made it harder to learn what was really happening on the front lines. Suddenly, bloggers who were once driving right up to the battlefield to cover the war are now being prohibited from.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

They can't report on what's going on on the front lines and the atrocities that they see or the failures of the Ministry of Defense that are taking place.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

People who ran telegram channels were accused of leaking false information to the public. And loudmouths like Prigozhin. Some analysts say the Kremlin handled him the old school way.

[News Reporter]

Caught on camera the final seconds of a private jet on board. Reportedly the head of the Wagner murder mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

But even with Prigozhin gone, it became a game of whack a ball. Other commanders started posting on social media, trying to force the Kremlin's hand, demanding command changes.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

The Kremlin, after that, took numerous measures to restrict major officials that had a presence online from doing something similar to what Prigozhin had done. They also fired some commanders that tried to use a similar tactic to blackmail the Kremlin into making command changes.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Take July 2023, when the Kremlin fired Ivan Popov, one of Russia's most successful military leaders.

[News Reporter]

I had no right to lie. Therefore, I outlined all the problematic issues that exist today in the army in terms of combat work and support. I called a spade a spade.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Like Prigozhin, Popov had publicly complained about.

[News Reporter]

Conditions at the front, the absence of artillery reconnaissance stations, and the mass deaths and injuries of our brothers from enemy artillery.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

He was very successful at it, but he was removed because he actually used the information space to basically accuse the Kremlin of not doing necessary command changes in Ministry of Defense and which would facilitate rotations on the battlefield.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

The message was clear even from the country's most respected commanders. No criticism would be tolerated. But there's just one problem. It's one thing to shoot down a mutinous leader's airplane or fire a mouthy commander. It's quite another to entirely control the stories of tens of thousands of fighters who are coming home.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

The Kremlin is really worried about the class of mobilized servicemen that don't necessarily fit in into various different narratives, because.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

The last time Moscow faced a wave of disillusioned veterans. After Afghanistan in the 1990s, the country unraveled into crime, chaos and humiliation. And the Kremlin worries that could happen again. That's when we come back. Stay with us.

[Brooke Gladstone]

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's on the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's on the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

It isn't the battlefield that keeps the Kremlin up at night. It's what happens when the soldiers come home. Vladimir Putin has good reason to fear the war stories they'll bring back.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

We have to remember that the Kremlin, especially Putin, he had lived through the devastating 1990s in Russia, which were plagued by Afghan war, servicemen coming back, veterans coming back with psychological trauma, with no prospects, no jobs, and turning to crime.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

Soviet troops.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

Troops will start pulling out of Afghanistan.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

In four weeks time under agreements signed today in Geneva.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

It's difficult for our soldiers, it's difficult for the Afghanis. It's time to reach peace there.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, thousands of soldiers returned home traumatized, angry, broke. And Katarina says that made them dangerous. Those men didn't just struggle to reintegrate. They became a force in their own right. They organized, they protested, they formed veteran communities that the Kremlin couldn't control and couldn't ignore. And Moscow is worried soldiers returning from Ukraine will do the same thing.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

If they come back en masse and they form, you know, a civil society around their grievances, then not only can the Kremlin not continue its war in Ukraine and, you know, possibly an invasion of NATO countries, but also the Kremlin probably wouldn't be able to sustain the regime.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

If Russia were to end the war. Today, some 700,000 soldiers would return home. 700,000 men and women with stories to tell. 700,000 men and women the Kremlin can't allow to speak freely. So Putin is moving first, offering payouts and privileges not as gratitude, but for leverage.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

There's a lot of rhetoric going around with needing to support mobilized servicemen and increasing their payments and so on and so on.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

The message is clear. Stay loyal and you'll be rewarded. The Kremlin has set up a fund for returning soldiers, including some $126 million earmarked for those disabled in battle. There's debt relief, education funds, sweeteners to make sure their loyalty remains with the state.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

The more that you tie them to the state and give them advantages with the state, the less these veteran communities or servicemen would actually be vocal about their experience in the war.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

And it's not just money. The Kremlin is tightening its grip on where and how veterans can speak. New laws make it harder for veterans groups to raise money or even operate. Instead, Putin is promoting government sanctioned patriotic groups.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

So one of the things that the Kremlin is trying to do is to intensify Censorship means, eliminate civil societies and replace them with pro Russian, pro war military patriotic organizations deliberately, in an effort to maintain the regime, but also to sustain the protracted war efforts.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

In the last couple of years, the Kremlin rolled out the svo, a state run veterans club, a kind of Russian vfw, and the goal isn't subtle.

[Katerina Stepanenko]

So we were seeing that the Kremlin after the mutiny really realized the importance of co opting veterans and servicemen to be on their side, paying them off as much as possible, forcing them to be in these like Kremlin sponsored communities or funds.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

And for those still fighting at the front, there's another plan. To get back to your idea of veterans organization, some people think that Putin isn't interested in stopping the war partly because he doesn't know what to do with these returning veterans. Is that right?

[Katerina Stepanenko]

Yes, absolutely. We actually recently saw the Russian Ministry of Defense sending around a survey of mobilized regiments and asking how many of them would be interested in signing up for a contract service. That means that the Kremlin could essentially keep them for as long as they want to.

[Dena Temple-Raston]

The logic is brutal. You can't protest or organize if you never come home. And so the war continues, not just in Ukraine, but in kitchens and living rooms across Russia where silence and fear fill the spaces words can't It's a place where the truth of the war lingers, unspoken, waiting for someone brave enough to say it aloud. From Recorded Future News, this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch, Lucas Riley and me, Dina Temple. Rest it was edited by Karen Duffin. We'll be back on Tuesday with an all new episode of Clip Click Here. Have a great weekend.

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