Moscow has begun a brand new marketing campaign to encourage Russians to enlist within the armed forces and combat in Ukraine, regardless of the Kremlin having beforehand denied needing more recruits.
In an try to draw extra volunteers to the entrance, Russian propaganda movies posted on social networks over the previous couple of days search to attraction to Russian males by way of the narratives of patriotism, morality and upward social mobility.
Many clips painting the warfare as an escape for males from the awful actuality of their every day lives — which consists of consuming vodka, poverty and helplessness, in response to the movies.
One of many items, posted on Dec. 14, contains a younger man who is selecting to combat as an alternative of partying together with his mates after which surprises everybody by shopping for himself a automobile with the cash he constructed from preventing on a navy contract.
In a video posted on Dec. 15, the previous girlfriend of a soldier is newly impressed together with his braveness and begs him to get again collectively. In one other video, a middle-aged man leaves the manufacturing facility job that doesn’t pay him sufficient to signal a navy contract and go to the entrance.
One other of the movies reveals posh-looking Russian males of their 30s loading a automobile. An aged girl asks the place are they going, to which one of many males says, “To Georgia. Perpetually.”
When one other girl spills a bag of groceries, as an alternative of serving to, the luxurious males simply get into the automobile and depart, whereas a gaggle of youthful Russian males rush to choose up the groceries. “The boys have left, the lads stayed,” one of many aged girls says.
In the meantime, studies and complaints of shortages of provisions and equipment within the Russian navy continue to emerge, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to resolve.
Throughout a gathering with moms of the mobilized in November, Putin insinuated that it’s higher to be killed preventing for the nation than to drink oneself to death on vodka.
Extra background: In late September, Putin announced a “partial mobilization,” which noticed over 300,000 individuals throughout Russia mobilized as its warfare in Ukraine didn’t make progress. The mobilization ended on Nov. 1, in response to the Russian Ministry of Protection. The precise variety of useless Russian troopers in Ukraine stays unknown.
Hundreds of males have fled Russia to keep away from enlisting, and fears of a second mobilization within the new 12 months are mounting.
Putin has tried to reassure the general public that there have been no plans right now for added mobilization.
