This is how Russia recruits new soldiers for the front

A man in camouflage stands in a supermarket, gun at the ready. The image changes, the man turns out to be a security guard at the entrance of the shop shown. “Have you dreamed of becoming such a protector?” it says next to it.

The landscape changes: In a gym, a trainer takes the bar away from the person in front of him. Is that where your strength lies? Night falls, a taxi drives through the wet darkness, the driver takes the money from his guest. “Did you want to take such a path?” is asked in white letters against a dark background.

Then all three men emerge from the fog, in army uniforms with a Z on their arm. “You’re a guy! Then so be it! Serve under contract,” reads the message from the Russian Ministry of Defense, which uses this video to recruit new contract soldiers. On state television, on social networks, at events.

Taxi drivers, security guards and fitness trainers are worth nothing in today’s Russia

The fragment with which Moscow wants to bring in its cannon fodder for the front in Ukraine is less than 50 seconds long. The message behind it is rather primitive: security guard, fitness trainer, taxi driver – these are not professions for real men, a real man should take up a gun and “defend his homeland”. That is the dream of all “muschiks”, as the macho man is called in Russia.

The patriarchal image of a boy being a “defender” (what he defends and why is not part of any discussion in the country) is cultivated in official Russia as “unique, traditional Russian values” that should not be questioned.

The commercial shows a crazy chauvinism that devalues ​​the professions presented. Professions that many men in Russia live on, even though they have already retired. You will find security guards in every store, in every office building, in every school.

The Ministry of Defense makes it clear that these – like fitness trainers or taxi drivers – are quasi failed forms of existence, of which only one thing can help: signing the contract as a contract soldier. All kinds of “benefits” are advertised: a monthly income of at least 2,300 francs (a lot of money in Russia), with hot meals for the soldiers’ children in kindergarten and school, with cleaning services for the elderly relatives.

If you want to live decently, you have to fight at the front

“They choose stability, ample opportunities for self-development, a decent standard of living and a high social status,” says the flyer that volunteers hand out at metro stations in Moscow or put in mailboxes in apartment buildings. Just like the video, the advertising brochures are also intended to attract men to “service to the fatherland”. Moscow has set up an extra post for future regular military personnel in the north of the city, and there is hardly any hurry.

The fact that a “decent standard of living” can hardly be achieved with civilian jobs is the tragedy in a country that burns its men for a president’s senseless imperialist dreams. The advertising campaign suggests that his dissatisfaction with his life can only be satisfied with a gun in his hand.

The state does not care where this dissatisfaction comes from. Instead, he has erected banners along the streets, depicting martial warriors, and next to them is the phrase: “There is such a profession – the defense of the fatherland.” Or: «Serving Russia is a real job» and «Military service is the choice of heroes. Your choice.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)