The end of the war in Chechnya has only deepened the plight of the 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade, specially created to maintain Russian rule in the separatist region and now left homeless by the decision to pull out all troops.
Most of the 205th's 6,000 troops were withdrawn hastily during the New Year's holiday week and consigned to two muddy, makeshift camps outside Budyonnovsk, a once-quiet town in southern Russia, famous only for a bloody raid by Chechen fighters in 1995.
Many troops have not been paid for months, and morale and discipline have hit rock bottom.
When the brigade first arrived, locals took up collections and gave the soldiers food and warm clothing. But the welcome has chilled as soldiers have sold weapons on the black market and appeared drunk in public.
Now the locals dub the soldiers the "200th Drunken Brigade," which in Russian is a pun on "the 205th."
One camp is mostly tents set up in a field of frozen mud. The second is in a sprawling, unfinished building re-quisitioned by the army.
"This was not what we expected," muttered Colonel Sergei Ivanovich at the second camp. "This was an active, proven brigade that has been abandoned. The boys who defended the state's interests are now no longer wanted. Not one officer has an apartment. We'll never understand."
Officers live and cook with their families in single rooms. Soldiers share rooms packed with bunks.
Security is so low that a foreign journalist was able to walk into the camp unchallenged. Drunken soldiers loitered and smoked in corridors. In one room, a dozen majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels were deep into a vodka-drinking binge.
"We feel sorry for them, but they're a load of hooligans," said Viktor Boichenko, a Budyonnovsk farmer. "Once a drunken soldier came up to us with a hand grenade, and we all ran off. Their officers have taken over the hotel, and a maid there told me they left land mines around."
Kolya, a 40-year-old kontraktnik, or short-term professional soldier, summed up the view of many of the troops. "We were promised everything -- apartments anywhere in Russia and decent pay -- and we got nothing," he said.
But he said most soldiers were glad they no longer had to fight.
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