Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un shake hands during a meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, in April 2019. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has tapped a Ukraine war veteran to head one of Russia’s regions, the highest post so far awarded to an invasion participant as the leader looks to forge a “new elite” of patriotic workers and soldiers.
In an orchestrated reshuffle, Putin replaced two governors Monday, appointing interim heads in the Rostov region, a key area bordering Ukraine and home to the military’s command center for the war, and the Tambov region, an agricultural and consumer goods producer in southern Russia.
For Tambov, Putin selected Yevgeny Pervyshov, a former mayor of a major southern city who in 2022 signed up to fight in Ukraine.
After several months of service, he was selected to take part in Putin’s “Time of Heroes” program, aimed at turning war veterans into influential civil servants.
Pervyshov’s appointment is an example of how the Kremlin is casting the war as an opportunity for society to replace oligarchic elites with patriotic workers and soldiers, and as a tool to advance one’s political career.
It is also part of the Kremlin’s efforts to attract more men to the front lines, boosting contractor sign-ups by dangling the possibility of a path to power and the promise of prestigious peacetime jobs, experts said.
Last month, the Kremlin announced the appointment of 10 program graduates to various sectors of the government, including as presidential envoys, regional ministers and managers of defense contractors.
“The Time of Heroes has come to Tambov,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, wrote Monday in his Telegram blog, praising the appointment. “You wanted a change of elites? Here it is! Although, I admit that many thought that it would go differently. But history has chosen this path for Russia!”
Analysts critical of the Kremlin say that most of the appointees are just figureheads with little political weight, and that there are actually limited opportunities for soldiers postwar.
The appointees so far have little in common with the majority of contract soldiers, who mostly sign up for financial gain, or those conscripted, who routinely complain that they are treated poorly by their commanders. The bar to be admitted into the program is also quite high - among the stated requirements is higher education and “experience in managing people.”
“In reality, the representatives of the very same nomenklatura clans are being nominated, just with an updated biography,” wrote Nezygar, an influential Telegram channel critical of the Kremlin.
Pervyshov served in BARS Kaskad, a reserve unit of elites that normally stays away from the front lines, according to British intelligence.
“Enlistment with BARS Kaskad likely allows Russian elite figures to sidestep statutory Russian military service requirements with guaranteed safety and potentially curry favour with the Kremlin,” the British Defense Ministry said in its assessment this year.
The Russian investigative outlet Important Stories reported that officials serving in the unit can leave whenever they need to and don’t face real combat danger.
Artem Zhoga, who took over as commander of the pro-Russian Sparta Battalion in Ukraine’s Donbas region after his son was killed in battle, is another alumni of the Time of Heroes program. He became the poster child for integrating pro-Russian personalities from occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia’s power structures.
In 2023, Putin used Russian-born Zhoga to stage the announcement of his next presidential run. In a carefully orchestrated TV spectacle, Zhoga told state media reporters that he had pleaded with Putin to run on behalf of soldiers fighting in Ukraine - and that the president had agreed. Zhoga now serves as Putin’s envoy in Russia’s Ural Federal District.
Pervyshov said that as part of the program, he interned in the Moscow mayor’s office and the Sakhalin regional government, and went on an expedition to the North Pole. Now, Pervyshov has become the first participant in the war to govern a region in Russia.
“This is yet another fake reality that the Kremlin endlessly breeds. It is designed to convince as many representatives of the general population as possible that they need to go to war, that it is respectable and prestigious, so go and think, ‘Maybe then they will appoint me too later,’” said Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former speechwriter for Putin.
Gallyamov now lives in Israel, and last year the Russian Justice Ministry declared him a “foreign agent.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, described the program as “part of Kremlin efforts to militarize Russian society and government.”
The program is being heavily advertised by state TV propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov.
“All roads must be open for you, both in military and civilian life. … Everyone who wants success will gain it, and we will help them,” Solovyov said in an ad, set to dramatic music, depicting uniformed men attending MBA-like classes in modern facilities.
