BERLIN — The Russian military is gradually expanding the role of women as it seeks to balance President Vladimir V. Putin’s promotion of traditional family roles with the need for new recruits for the war in Ukraine.
The Army’s growing outreach to women includes efforts to recruit female inmates into prisons, replicating on a smaller scale a strategy that has swelled its ranks with male prisoners. Recruiters in military uniforms have offered prisoners a pardon and $2,000 a month —10 times the national minimum wage—in exchange for serving in front-line positions for a year, said six current and former inmates at three prisons in different regions.
Dozens of prisoners have signed contracts or applied to enlist, the women said, a sign that suggests a broader effort to recruit female convicts.
And it’s not just about the women behind bars. Women now appear in Russian military recruitment advertisements.
“No combat experience or military specialties required,” said an ad aimed at women published in March in the Russian region of Tatarstan. She offered training and an enlistment bonus equivalent to $4,000.
However, heRussia’s need to replenish its ranks for a long-term war against Ukraine and its Western allies has clashed with Putin’s portrayal of Russia as a bastion of social conservatism facing the decadent West. Putin has placed women at the center of this vision, as mothers and wives who safeguard social harmony. This has resulted in contradictory policies.
The inmates who enlisted in late 2023 have not yet been sent to fight, the six current and former inmates said.
Ksenia Shkoda, a native of central Ukraine who has fought for pro-Russian forces since 2014, and six other women fighting for Russia said local recruitment offices still systematically reject volunteers.
Tatiana Dvornikova, a Russian sociologist, believes the Russian military would delay sending female convicts into battle while it has other options.
“It would create a very unpleasant reputational risk for the Russian military,” he said.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, women who wanted to fight for the Kremlin often made their way to the front via militias in eastern Ukraine. Others joined a Russian paramilitary unit called Española. It opened its ranks to women in September 2022 and has posted videos advertising his combat roles.
“These people take care of me, they are like family,” said an Espanola fighter originally from Crimea known as Poshest, which means “plague.” She has fought since 2022 as a paramedic, sniper and airplane pilot.
All of the female soldiers said that women remained unusual in their units, outside of medical roles. Russia’s cautious approach differs from the policy adopted by Ukraine. The number of women serving in the Ukrainian military has increased 40 percent since the invasion, reaching 43,000 by the end of 2023. After the invasion, the Ukrainian military abolished gender restrictions in many combat roles. The much larger Russian Army had around 40,000 women in service before the war. The majority, however, have performed administrative functions.
Ruslan Pukhov, a member of the Russian Defense Ministry’s advisory council, said the idea of using women in combat began to gain support among generals after Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015, which brought them into contact with the disciplined women of the Kurdish militias.
The invasion of Ukraine led Russia to consider the potential of some 40,000 women who were imprisoned.
“Everyone wanted to go because, despite everything, it is still freedom”said Yulia, who said she applied to enlist in the Army while serving a sentence for murder. “Either I died or I bought an apartment.”
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