More than two years into the war in Ukraine and the Russian Federation is working to keep its recruiting up to replace casualties on the front lines. And now it’s taking a new tactic. A new recruiting ad released this past week by the Russian Ministry of Defense is asking Russians “What are our men made of?” Are they live streamers with cars and banana smoothies or are they soldiers in the field?
No, seriously. Watch it for yourself.
It’s not quite “Be all you can be” but it does get its point across. And that point? You’re only a “real man” if you join the Russian military. Anyone else is sporting tattoos and pierced ears, enjoying a banana smoothie or even wearing makeup while hosting an apparently popular livestream in front of a new sports car.
This isn’t the first time the Russian military has leaned into extreme depictions of a hypermasculine military. One previous ad that went viral among detractors of America’s military featured a Russian serviceman doing physical training and fighting in the field.
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Notably this new ad is short on actual combat or signs of victory — unless you count the “Z” symbol on uniforms and tanks, just tough looking dirty men in uniform glaring at the camera while holding weapons. There’s not even a Russian soldier fighting a fire monster. But the contrast between the soldiers and the apparently effete, weak, pampered men at home is clear. Russia notoriously is very bad on LGBTQ rights, with laws ingraining homophobia into the state and banning symbols associated with LGBTQ people.
The ad comes at a rough point for Russia in its “special military operation” into Ukraine. An expected quick victory has turned into a more than two-year battle of attrition and heavy losses, and even the Kremlin-aligned Wagner Group staging an attempted coup and capturing a Russian city before being stopped. In the last month, Ukrainian forces actually invaded Russian territory. The fight in the Kursk Oblast is ongoing and has yet to be repelled. The situation there is so bad that Russia, despite some recent gains in captured territory, is pulling some forces out of Ukraine to reinforce defenses inside its own borders. So things are clearly going well for Russia’s military.
Perhaps that’s why the Russian military decided to go all out with the new recruiting ad. As the war in Ukraine has stretched on, the military has been struggling to get Russians to sign contracts with the military. A “partial mobilization” activated roughly 300,000 reservists in late 2022 and early 2023. That in turn led to rare protests against the war and Russian citizens even burning down recruitment offices.
But the Ministry of Defense clearly hopes Russians will choose the front lines over a banana smoothie.
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