At least 400,000 Russian troops have already returned from the front, investigation finds

At least 400,000 Russian troops have returned from the front to civilian life, according to journalists at the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, who reached that conclusion by comparing limited official data with their own calculations.

The journalists relied on the most recent official estimate: Sergei Novikov, head of the presidential directorate for public projects, said in December 2025 that 167,000 people had applied to the Defenders of the Fatherland fund — created to help returning troops — and received veteran status. Novikov also said another 250,000 people who had returned from the front “remain unemployed,” though Russian state media soon removed that figure from their headlines. Novaya Gazeta Europe added the two figures together, arriving at a total of 417,000 troops who have returned from the front.

The journalists reached the same figure through a second method, starting from the minimum estimate of how many Russians have already passed through the war over more than four years: roughly 1.5–1.6 million contract soldiers and mobilized men, not counting volunteers. The army fighting in Ukraine numbers about 700,000 people, and the death toll, according to independent estimates — including Meduza’s — exceeds 350,000. “By very rough calculations, at least 400,000 people may have already returned from the front to civilian life,” the newspaper wrote.

Experts interviewed by the journalists generally agree, calling 400,000 a lower-bound estimate for the number of people who have returned from the front. “I think a range of 500,000 to 800,000 people looks quite plausible. That’s everyone who has officially returned for any reason,” an analyst at the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) said.

Novaya Gazeta Europe said troops with serious wounds were the first to return from the front. By the most conservative estimate, at least 300,000 troops should have been demobilized from the army due to wounds as of the end of 2025.

Former convicts who left prison colonies to fight, mostly with the Russian mercenary group Wagner, are also returning from the front in exchange for a pardon — a group the outlet estimates at around 31,000 people. The journalists cautioned that some of them may have ended up back in prison and then returned to the front from there a second time. They estimated that about 50,000 returning volunteers had signed contracts with both Wagner Group and other formations.

Once the war ends, assuming its nature does not change radically, another 700,000 people with combat experience could return from the front, along with new severely wounded veterans who emerge in the meantime, the journalists wrote. Former troops “judging by open data, commit an anomalously high number of murders and beatings with serious consequences compared with ordinary men,” the outlet said.