President Vladimir Putin’s vision of Russian women clashes with the needs of the military in the country. Russian combat units need recruits, so they are looking to recruit women. They are lured to the front by promotional materials, female prisoners are recruited by officials in exchange for pardons and financial rewards. But for Russian society, women in the army are a “manifestation of desperation”, reminds The New York Times.
Moscow
6:59 am May 6, 2024
Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Print
Copy the url address
Abbreviated address
Copy to clipboard
Close
Russian President Vladimir Putin (center) poses with female students of the Anatoly Serov Higher Military Aviation School in Krasnodar after presenting them with flowers on the eve of International Women’s Day, March 7, 2024 | Source: Profimedia
“Combat experience and military specialization are not required,” read the ad, which was posted in Russia’s Tatarstan in March. It offered women training and an entry bonus of 4,000 US dollars (over 93,000 crowns). He also advertised the only common goal of the Russian army – victory.
The Russian army is trying to strengthen its ranks in the war in Ukraine, which it presents as a long-term conflict not only with Kiev, but also with its Western allies. But this strategic need clashes with the ideology of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prepare the next generation for war. In schools in Russia, they will learn how to make and control attack drones
Read the article
Putin portrays women as wives and mothers who guard the nation’s social harmony. Even in a recent speech, he reminded Russians that family comes first for every woman, regardless of her career or other achievements.
But the Russian army has a different idea about women in Russia. Its strong position in the war in Ukraine is sustainable only if it can keep recruiting new recruits. It is the Russian wives and mothers who enter the fighting voluntarily that should become more of them.
“I’m used to the fact that they often look at me like a monkey and say, ‘She’s in uniform!'” Ksenia Škoda, a native of central Ukraine who has been fighting on Russia’s side since 2014, told The New York Times.
For mercy to the front line
The Russian army is also looking for female reinforcements among female prisoners – in exchange for a year’s service in the front line, the recruiters offer them a pardon and 2,000 US dollars a month, i.e. ten times the Russian minimum wage.
Dozens of women applied for admission to the army from prison.
However, some female volunteers will not make it to Ukraine. The convicts who signed up at the end of 2023 have not yet been sent into battle.
What is behind the delay in their deployment, however, is not clear. Neither the Prison Service nor the Russian Ministry of Defense have commented on the case.
Ms. Škoda and six other women fighting for Russia in Ukraine told The New York Times that recruitment agencies still routinely reject female volunteers or send them to the reserves.
Russia to abolish two prisons in Siberia. They were emptied because the convicts went to fight in Ukraine
Read the article
Russian sociologist Tatjana Dvornikova, who studies women’s prisons, believes that the Russian military will delay sending convicted women into combat until it has other recruitment options.
“It would be a very unpleasant reputational risk for the Russian military,” she said. Most Russians would see such a breach of social mores as a sign of desperation.
But women in the Russian army have a longer history. The first female combat units in the country were created at the end of the First World War and even then they were the result of heavy army losses. The same was true decades later, when women were deployed by the Soviet Union.
At the time, female pilots and fighters were often admired – but The New York Times points out that this was often done in an attempt to cover up discrimination or sexual harassment that many women in the military faced.
Volunteer
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, women who wanted to fight for the Kremlin often got to the front through the militia in eastern Ukraine rather than through conventional units.
“They accepted anyone, absolutely everyone,” said Anna Ilyasova, who grew up in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and joined the local separatist militia days before the Russian invasion. “I couldn’t even hold an automatic rifle,” she said.
Hate maybe, but not contempt. Ukrainian soldiers see Russians as tough enemies, says photographer
Read the article
More women have joined the Russian paramilitary unit Española, which is accepting women from September 2022.
“These people take care of me, they are like family,” said Españoly, a fighter from Crimea who goes by the nickname Poshest, meaning “Plague”.
‘But you’re a woman’
The number of women serving in the Ukrainian military has increased by 40 percent since the invasion, reaching 43,000 by the end of 2023, according to the Ministry of Defense. Additionally, after the invasion, the Ukrainian military removed gender restrictions for many positions needed in the military.
The much larger Russian military had a similar number of women in service before the war, around 40,000. But most of them served in administrative positions.
“I am often kept from fighting by arguments like: But you are a woman!” admitted the pro-Russian soldier Škoda. “And it always makes me crazy,” she added.
Russian army officer Ilyasova repeatedly rejected a marriage proposal from a man from her unit. “I always say I married the war,” she said.
jud
Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Print
Copy the url address
Abbreviated address
Copy to clipboard
Close
