Russia is recruiting more and more women to fight in defense units near the country’s border with Ukraine, Newsweek reports.
Russia has not used female soldiers for combat in the past, and last fall a member of the Russian parliament said the country would only turn to recruits as a “last resort.”
However, as Russia continues to suffer high casualty rates in Ukraine and struggles to fill its ranks with new men, authorities in at least one region hope that female fighters can fill defense gaps.
According to The Moscow Times, officials in Russia’s southwestern Belgorod region have focused recent recruitment efforts to strengthen defense units on female fighters. Belgorod has been the site of escalating attacks in recent months, which regional leaders have blamed on Ukraine. (Kiev denied involvement in the Belgorod attacks, while two groups that claimed responsibility for some of the incidents identified themselves as Russian dissidents.)
On Thursday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that Russia had lost 240,010 soldiers in the war, which Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022.
Russia is reportedly facing problems in meeting its recruitment targets. In late March, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update that the Kremlin was preparing a “major military recruitment drive” in the hope of recruiting an additional 400,000 troops. However, the ministry said Russia would not achieve this goal.
“It is highly unlikely that the campaign will attract 400,000 genuine volunteers,” the department wrote, adding that “regional authorities will try to meet their stated recruitment targets by forcing men to join”.
The signs are that Russia is looking for other ways to replenish its ranks. This week, the nation’s parliament extended the maximum age at which men can be drafted to serve in the military. The law, passed Tuesday, allows men to serve until age 70.
Last fall, the Kremlin said it had no intention of recruiting women, and Tatyana Butskaya, a State Duma deputy and first deputy chair of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, told URA.ru at the time that she did not believe women should be drafted.
“It is not part of our history… There is always a male warrior and a woman waiting for him, guarding the hearth. Women have always assumed a different protection,” she said. “In general, war is not for women. And women would only be mobilized as a last resort.”
In further evidence of the small role of women in Putin’s forces, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in March that 1,100 Russian women were serving in Ukraine and that his country’s armed forces had a total of 39,000 women in its ranks. This figure represents a small fraction of the 1.15 million active military personnel in the Russian Armed Forces.
Russian state television stations have recently tried to attract female recruits by airing programs that highlight the work of an all-female unit receiving military training in Belgorod, The Moscow Times reported. Some of the footage is said to show female teachers and librarians firing rifles.
The Moscow Times shared a Telegram post that included a female recruitment ad originally posted by Natalia Kolesnikova, a member of the Belgorod Territorial Defense.
Independent Russian news channel Verstka spoke to Kolesnikova, who said the recruits in Belgorod will undergo a basic military training course as well as learn how to fly drones.
She also noted that while there are no age or physical fitness requirements for recruits, prospective recruits “need to understand that you’re going to have to run, jump, etc., it’s up to each person whether they can or not.”
Working on the post:
2023-07-22 19:15:00
#Russian #army #left #soldiers #began #recruit #women
