In his May 9 Victory Parade speech, Russian president Vladimir Putin likened the war in Ukraine to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, saying “real war” had been unleashed against Russia.
He is reported to be planning to mobilise an extra 500,000 troops in 2023. In April he passed new legislation introducing electronic military draft papers, which will make it much harder to avoid conscription.
The last wave of conscription in September 2022 prompted an exodus of hundreds of thousands of young men to neighbouring countries. So to encourage men to enlist, the Kremlin has launched a massive media campaign appealing to the notion of “warrior masculinity”.
