The Boomerang Effect: Russia’s Full‑Scale Invasion of UkraineExpands Crime Rate at Home

GeorgiaRussiaUkraineKyrgyzstanKazakhstanMoldovaArmeniaPolicy briefing note

31 Mar

Written By Richard Fern

March 2026

Briefing Note 42

Dr Alexander Kupatadze (KCL)

Prof. Erica Marat (NDU)

SOC ACE project: Exploring the Consequences of Organised Crime and Illegal Trade Displacement on Eurasia

PUBLICATION SUMMARY

Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine has produced a powerful internal shock that is transforming the country’s criminal landscape and the way the state deploys repression. This briefing note draws on wider research that demonstrates how the war has created a ‘boomerang effect’, whereby armed conflict abroad has destabilised Russia’s own security environment more severely than that of Ukraine. In other words, the war has made Russia both more criminalised and more repressive.

Using Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT) Project (GDELT Project, n.d.) and Political Event Classification, Attributes, and Types (POLECAT) (Scarborough et al., 2023) datasets, alongside interviews and trade analysis, the research shows that Russia has experienced the steepest rise in serious crime among all of Ukraine’s neighbours. Non‑state criminal activity surged sharply in 2022, particularly in arms trafficking, the drug trade and human trafficking. In 2024 alone, Russia recorded 617,301 serious offences, the highest number since 2010. Although Ukraine and Poland also experienced increases, Russia’s spike was far larger in scale and duration.

Several conflict‑driven forces underpin these trends: weakened policing capacity as officers are redeployed to the front line; social normalisation of violence; the return of combat veterans suffering from trauma and with access to weapons; sanctions‑induced economic disruption; and new wartime opportunities for profiteering in arms, drugs and other contraband.

The research suggests that post‑war Russia will remain highly criminalised and increasingly reliant on coercion, with long‑term implications for domestic stability and Western policy planning.

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