US newspaper The New York Times reports: Russia's expectation from its people is to join the army and have children

In recent months, the Russian government has doubled enlistment bonuses for contract soldiers and flooded social media and city streets with recruitment advertisements. Additionally, a new law allows criminal suspects to avoid prosecution if they sign up to fight. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin has declared increasing births a national priority, and this effort entered a new repressive phase last week with a bill that bans the promotion of a child-free lifestyle.

Although these two campaigns are separate, they are two sides of the same coin in wartime Russia: the Kremlin's increasingly aggressive attempt to involve ordinary Russians in reshaping their country to gain an advantage over the West. In the short term, Putin's army needs more soldiers. According to Western estimates, it is suffering a thousand casualties a day in a war of attrition in Ukraine that shows no signs of ending.

'A WOMAN'S BODY IS FOR PRODUCING CHILDREN, A MAN'S BODY IS MERELY FOR THE ABILITY TO KILL'

According to Putin, in the long term, Russia needs more people: to support an economy that is increasingly isolated from the West, to reduce the country's dependence on migration, and, of course, to provide a pool of soldiers for future wars. Andrey Makarychev, a professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia who studies the relationship between the state and human bodies, said that in Putin's thinking, the body has turned into a public good. Makarychev said, “A woman's body is for producing children, and a man's body is merely for the ability to pull a trigger and ultimately kill.”

Last month, Putin ordered the Russian army to be increased by 180 thousand people to 1.5 million, a number that would make Russia the second-largest army in the world after China. The Kremlin attributed this increase to the number of threats facing the country. However, analysts say that building an army of 1.5 million is unrealistic, largely due to Russia's shrinking population. According to Dara Massicot, a Russian military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the challenge facing Russia is not just recruiting new soldiers, but also having a workforce large enough to produce the weapons and equipment that such a large army would need.

'IT IS NECESSARY TO MAKE HAVING CHILDREN FASHIONABLE'

However, when it comes to birth rates, the Russian leader saw some room for improvement. Putin said, “It is necessary to take care of the population, to increase the fertility rate. It is necessary to make having many children fashionable, as it used to be in Russia.”

The number of children reported born in Russia in the first half of this year was 599 thousand 630, the lowest level in the last quarter-century; the total population, including occupied Crimea, has decreased by 1.8 million since 2020, falling to 146.1 million. The Kremlin is using financial rewards to encourage births, just as it does for military recruitment. Russian women who give birth to their first child are paid a one-time payment of 6 thousand 700 dollars. On Monday, when the Russian government announced its budget for the next three years, it touted more than 60 billion dollars in planned spending to support pregnant women and families with children.

News Source: 12punto