June 21, 2026: Vladimir Putin does not trust his generals, oligarchs/major corporation leaders and soldiers. Since he sent Russian troops into Ukraine during 2022 and launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he has expanded the number and role of Politruks/Political Commissars. Translated, the term means Political Leader. Earlier in the war Russia had experimented with the reintroduction of the Cold War era Zampolit/Political Officer. Russia got rid of these political officers after 1991 when the Communists lost control of the government. That slowly changed as one-party rule returned a decade later. By 2013 Russia ordered the return of ideological training for troops and increased use of informants and opinion surveys to monitor morale and loyalty in the military. In effect, the Russian government has returned to using the communist-era Zampolit. In Soviet times every unit commander had a Zampolit as his deputy who represented the Communist Party and could veto any of the commanders’ decisions. The Zampolit was responsible for troop loyalty and political correctness. Sort of a communist chaplain. Earlier, in 2010, the Russian Army reintroduced chaplains, something that the communists did away with in the 1920s. The new chaplains were, however, expected to report on the loyalty of the troops, to church and state. Starting in 2018 additional officers were added to handle ideological training and monitoring morale. Not exactly the return of the Zampolit to non-communist Russia but a return of most of the Zampolits’ duties.

The current use of Politruks includes monitoring the attitudes and behavior of officers and enlisted men, a system that Putin began to put back in place in 2018. The revival of the Zampolit/Politruk indicates that Putin is increasingly worried about the loyalty and reliability of his military commanders and men. Putin has decided that the revival and expansion of such a system is the best way to ensure that the army does not become a political threat. As before, the Zampolit/Politruk are despised by many officers and men. After the Communists took power in 1917, they established a system of political commissars to control what they referred to as the highly trained officers serving in the Red Army. These commissars had the same rank as the officers to whom they were attached and could countermand orders those officers gave or even remove them. Over the course of Soviet history, this system evolved, with the political commissars, who in some cases were also known as politruks, gaining power when the government was especially nervous about their loyalty and losing authority when the military was stronger, leading the country’s political leadership to dispense with them. After the Soviet Union collapsed, this system in the Russian army was dismantled only to be revived in the last decade, nominally to improve political education rather than improve the government’s control of the military, and at least so far, not allowing the politruks to have the powers that their Soviet-era predecessors did to overrule or relieve military officers.

Government officials are alarmed at the growing power of politruks. These political officers are now doing what their predecessors did in Soviet times. The total number of these Zampolits/Politruks has more than tripled in recent years, primarily through the introduction of new positions at the battalion, and company unit level, especially in the Russian forces now fighting in Ukraine.