Sever since Russian President Putin announced the mobilization, everyday life has become schizophrenic in our country. On the one hand, everyone is afraid that a loved one could be sent to the front. In telephone conversations, in the subway, in shops you can hear snippets of dialogue like “He’s over forty” or “He just came back from the army, his mother is lying awake at night” – it’s clear what it’s about. In front of my house today I watched an elderly couple put their adult son with a large backpack into a taxi that was taking him away. Publicly, on the other hand, one speaks rather optimistically of the mobilization, and not only when propaganda media show how conscripts are dismissed. Even the mobilized themselves signaled surrender to fate with phrases such as “What has to be, has to be” or “That is a must”.
Currently, the third “generation” of soldiers is going to the front in Russia. The first, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, was made up mostly of professional or contract soldiers, i.e. those who remained in the army after conscription. These were mainly people from the provinces, where there is hardly any well-paid work. In many cases, conscripts under pressure from their commanders also signed up.
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