It is not clear if the campaigns are having the desired effect.
Ivan, a 34-year-old Muscovite, told NBC News on Friday that he had noticed the recruitment posters in the capital, but said they did not arouse in him any desire to serve.
The concept of a “real man” was foreign to him, he said, adding: “Serving your family is one thing and the way we serve in our military is another. Those are different things.»
Being a real man for him, he said, was about protecting the family and doing something good in life, «creating something instead of destroying it.»
There are severe restrictions on reporting in Russia, where many find it difficult to speak honestly about the war in public. NBC News decided not to use Ivan’s last name to protect him from possible punishment for speaking out.
Last month, British military intelligence aforementioned Russian media reports suggest that President Vladimir Putin may be looking to recruit another 400,000 soldiers. NBC News could not confirm those reports.
During the first wave of mobilization, some Russian media reported stories of newly mobilized soldiers who lacked proper training and supplies, and who were thrown into the heat of fighting without much preparation.
But the ad posted this week appears to be aimed at attracting soldiers hired specifically to avoid that controversy.
His call for “real men” to join the fight plays into the stereotype of masculinity that has been revered under Putin, who admitted that he himself once drove a taxi to earn extra money after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For more than two decades, the Kremlin has been cultivating the «macho» image of the Russian leader, who has often been photographed topless, swimming in wild rivers and riding horses during his summer vacations in Siberia.
That narrative has been amplified and accelerated since the invasion, with many of the war’s hardliners heralding him as a «real man» for invading his neighbor in the face of a perceived Western threat.
It’s no surprise that in its latest recruitment drive, the Kremlin is trying to tap into that kind of «emotional drive» and appeal to the «inner macho» of Russian men, said Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The use of the Soviet-era narrative sounds «pretentious and noble, while concealing the necrophiliac essence of using people as cannon fodder, disregarding the needs of the economy and declining workforce», he told NBC News.
Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former Putin speechwriter, wrote on Facebook that the ad alluded to terminology used «in the criminal world, whose code of conduct is used by the Russian ruling class.» In that world, he said, the word «muzhik» (which means «real man» in Russian) is synonymous with «the one who suffers and tolerates.»
“So this video turned out to be much more revealing than originally planned,” he added.
The announcement also seems to reinforce an argument Putin himself made to a grieving mother last year that rather than die for «vodka,» the Russian men murdered in Ukraine were not wasting their lives in vain.
However, some experts alluded to the fact that Russia was not alone in using masculinity as a recruiting tactic, and that several nations, including Britain, have employed the «real men» narrative, though perhaps to a large extent. part decades ago.
The announcement was ridiculed by some media outlets in Ukraine.
A bitterly sarcastic headline in the Kyiv Post on Friday read: «Russian video campaign calls for ‘real men’ to replace enlisted cannon fodder.»
Meanwhile, the Unian news agency saying on the messaging app Telegram on Wednesday that the ad is the latest «embarrassment» of Russian propaganda and is trying to sell Russian men on the idea that it is better to become a «corpse or disabled» than to be a security guard or a fitness instructor.