By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian army has launched a video marketing campaign to lure extra skilled troopers to struggle in Ukraine which challenges these to indicate they’re “an actual man” and swap what it casts as hum-drum civilian life for the battlefield.
The advert, set to stirring music, follows a report from British army intelligence and Russian media stories that counsel Moscow is searching for to recruit as much as 400,000 skilled troopers – on a volunteer foundation – to bolster its forces in Ukraine.
The advert has to this point been launched on main Russian social networking websites.
Russia, which says it’s prosecuting what it calls “a particular army operation,” doesn’t disclose full casualty figures. However as much as 43,000 Russians have been killed within the warfare to this point, in response to a not too long ago leaked estimate from the US Protection Intelligence Company.
It’s estimated that as much as 17,500 Ukrainians have been killed too.
The advert, which invitations males to signal a contract with the Russian Protection Ministry for a wage beginning at 204,000 rubles ($2,495) a month, exhibits a person in grocery store wearing army uniform holding a heavy machine gun. He’s then proven within the uniform of a safety guard with the query:
“Is that this the type of defender you dream of changing into?”
Subsequent within the video, a person is strolling by means of the fog with different troopers on what seems to be like a battlefield. He’s then proven as a gymnasium teacher serving to a shopper elevate weights.
“Is that this actually the place your power lies?” the video asks, earlier than slicing to a taxi driver taking a shopper’s fare who then transforms right into a soldier on the battlefield.
“You are an actual man. Be one,” says the advert.
After launching a partial mobilization drive in September which prompted tens of hundreds of Russian males to flee the nation to keep away from being drafted, the authorities are enjoying down the opportunity of a second mobilization name – regardless of a transfer to introduce digital name up papers to clamp down on draft dodgers – and are searching for to recruit volunteers as a substitute.
Posters searching for skilled troopers have sprung up within the Russian capital in latest weeks declaring that “Our Occupation is to defend the Motherland.”
The posters, which say the military is searching for gunners, sappers, army medics, drivers and tank commanders, promise potential recruits “respect, an honorable occupation and respectable pay.”
($1 = 81.7500 rubles)
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Modifying by Man Faulconbridge and Raissa Kasolowsky)