Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Across Russia, families of men sent to Ukraine have spent years fighting a second war inside the state bureaucracy.
The governor of Russia’s Kursk region Alexander Khinshtein announced on Monday that his region would become the first in Russia to appoint a dedicated ombudsman for Ukraine war veterans and the relatives of killed servicemen.
Khinshtein named Maxim Kalutskikh, a retired army colonel from the region, to the new post. “Essentially, we’re the first region where such a position is being introduced on a systematic basis,” the governor said at a weekly regional government meeting, framing the office as a model other regions are expected to copy.
Kalutskikh fought in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, graduated from the Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School, and currently serves as deputy chairman of the Kursk veterans’ association, independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe reported. The office will operate on a voluntary basis, report to the governor, and have authority to request documents from state bodies and propose legislative changes.
The complaints the office is being built for
Khinshtein said the ombudsman will help families fill out government paperwork and apply for benefits, and will intervene in any “situation where someone hits a dead end.” The specific grievances the office is set up to handle include disputes with military medical boards, delayed or denied payments, kinship confirmation for killed servicemen, and incorrect classifications of soldiers as absent without leave.
Those bureaucratic choke points have been documented across Russia. Several regions sharply cut one-time death benefits for soldiers’ families this year: payments in the Ulyanovsk region were cut from 1 million rubles to 500,000 in February and then to 50,000 in April, while the Saratov region reduced its payment from 1 million rubles to 100,000 in late September, Meduza reported this month.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reported in April that about 10,000 veterans had sought help finding work through the state-backed Defenders of the Fatherland foundation and that 35% of them remained unemployed as of early 2025, down from 46% a year earlier. Veterans told the outlet that disability certification for combat injuries was “notoriously difficult” to obtain.
Why Kursk, and why now
Kursk itself has particular reason to anticipate a surge of veteran grievances. Ukrainian forces occupied parts of the oblast from August 6, 2024 until Russia retook the territory in mid-March 2025, in a cross-border incursion that pulled Russian troops back onto home soil. Many of the men now returning from the front in and around Kursk are the ones who fought that campaign.
Khinshtein was appointed acting governor of Kursk by President Vladimir Putin in December 2024, during the Ukrainian occupation, and won the regional governor’s election in 2025. Kalutskikh told Monday’s meeting he would devote himself to protecting the rights of veterans and their families.
