For years, President Vladimir V. Putin has vowed to create a “new elite” in Russia made up of veterans of his war in Ukraine.
He had many reasons to do so, analysts said. The former soldiers would be loyal to him and to his policies. Their elevation would deepen his militarization of society, serve as an incentive for military recruitment and help integrate troops after they leave the battlefield.
Now, Mr. Putin has taken the biggest step yet to fulfill his pledge. Last week, he dismissed a popular governor in a region bordering Ukraine and replaced him with a military general.
The new governor, Alexander Shuvayev, commanded a unit that took part in Russia’s battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, one of the bloodiest of the war.
Investigators in Ukraine have accused his unit of war crimes, including executions of prisoners of war, though he has not been singled out for criminal indictment by the Ukrainian government, as some other Russian generals have. His unit also had a reputation for using soldiers as cannon fodder, which did not win Mr. Shuvayev friends among Russian pro-war bloggers.
Mr. Shuvayev is a graduate of Time of Heroes, a Kremlin-funded postgraduate program that Mr. Putin started in 2024 to prepare war veterans for government jobs. The program has trained about 160 veterans, most of them with recent combat experience.
The new bureaucrats reflect “the foreign policy that Russia is pushing,” said Mikhail Komin, a political scientist at the Center for European Policy Analysis, based in Brussels.
Once Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 morphed into a protracted war, Mr. Putin began speaking about the need to reward the men fighting in Ukraine.
Some government officials started using short stints in the military to advance their careers. But Russia’s political class, analysts said, was skeptical that Mr. Putin’s call would elevate war veterans to significant positions of power.
In 2024, Mr. Putin appointed Artyom Zhoga, a former military commander in the war against Ukraine, as his envoy to the Urals district, and then invited him to join the presidential Security Council. The envoy position, however, holds little power.
Since then, though, more war veterans have been climbing up the ladder in the Russian government. In just the past two months, at least nine have received appointments to positions like deputy governor and minister in a regional government, according to Time of Heroes’ Telegram channel.
That program is highly selective. Only 85 out of some 22,000 applicants were accepted for the last academic year.
Mr. Putin has kept raising the subject of helping veterans, in both the public and private sectors, in apparent reaction to his government’s lack of enthusiasm.
Last week, he instructed government ministers at a conference on heavy industry to try harder to make sure that veterans were given jobs in the sector.
“The guys are fighting, performing well — we need to support them,” he said.
Still, the appointment of Mr. Shuvayev as governor of the Belgorod region was greeted with skepticism even by some vocal supporters of Mr. Putin.
A Kremlin-friendly spin doctor, Pavel Slatinov, expressed concern about bringing in someone from a “totally different environment” to the governor’s office.
“Such a profound and somewhat radical change in the style of governance is fraught with risks,” he wrote on his blog. He warned that Russia’s post-Soviet history included no successful examples of regional governors who previously served as generals.
Asked about the choice of Mr. Shuvayev, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told the Russian news media that staffing decisions were “not confined to” candidates with a military background.
Mr. Shuvayev’s predecessor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, was highly respected in Belgorod for his hands-on approach to dealing with the region’s wartime challenges. Residents liked the personal touch of Mr. Gladkov, who opened his daily video messages by saying, “Good morning, dear friends.”
At times, Mr. Gladkov was critical of the national government. He publicly blamed the Defense Ministry for failing to prevent a short-lived Ukrainian incursion into his region in 2023. This year, he strongly questioned the Kremlin’s restrictions on the Telegram app, which Belgorod residents rely on for warnings about Ukrainian attacks.
When his dismissal was announced, residents took to social media to thank him for his work. It was an extraordinary display of support. Officials like Mr. Gladkov typically are scapegoats for the problems in Russia’s regions.
Ilya, a 22-year-old law school graduate in Belgorod, said he was wary of the appointment of a general to lead the region.
“We feel a lot of tension in Belgorod because of the hostilities and the military as it is, and now they are dropping on us a military man as a governor,” Ilya said by telephone. The New York Times is withholding his last name for his protection. Publicly criticizing a war veteran carries criminal charges in Russia.
On Monday, Mr. Shuvayev convened his first meeting of the regional government. When Mr. Gladkov was in charge, such sessions were live-streamed. Mr. Shuvayev conducted his behind closed doors.
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.
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