Kathrine Frich
He says everyone should fight for their homeland.
When a nation goes to war, the military usually seeks out the young, the strong, and the healthy.
But as a grinding conflict stretches into its fourth year, one country is rapidly running out of fit recruits.
Now, desperate political leaders want a new strategy to fill the empty trenches.
Opening the ranks
Russian officials want to rewrite the rules of military service to include the sick, the elderly, and the disabled.
Alexei Kondratiev made the drastic proposal during a live television broadcast.
The Russian Federation Council member appeared on the Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov programme to demand a complete overhaul of current recruitment standards.
“People have the right to defend their homeland. And it doesn’t matter if you’re wounded, sick, in a mansion, have some kind of illness, it doesn’t matter how old you are or what gender you are,” Kondratiev said, as reported by the Daily Express.
Women and wartime reality
The official also highlighted the strict barriers keeping women out of volunteer combat units.
He noted that many women want to enlist, but current laws block them from the frontlines.
Kondratiev suggested parliament must step in immediately. “Then the laws can be revised based on the realities of wartime,” he noted.
The televised discussion painted a very bleak picture. Panelists described a nation struggling to survive mass drone strikes and attacks on its vital infrastructure.
A sign of desperation
Host Vladimir Solovyov agreed that Russia must urgently pivot to a total war footing.
This conversation highlights a severe manpower crisis for President Vladimir Putin, whose forces have suffered massive casualties during attritional battles in eastern Ukraine.
Commanders need bodies. To maintain combat operations, military leaders have already deployed older recruits and soldiers with serious medical conditions.
According to the Daily Express, independent observers have spotted frontline troops using wheelchairs near forward combat positions.
Buying more bodies
The Russian government has desperately tried offering huge cash bonuses to lure healthy men into military uniform.
But with no end to the fighting in sight, those financial incentives are no longer enough to replace the fallen soldiers.
Publicly demanding that disabled and elderly citizens head to the trenches shows exactly how far the state will go to keep its war machine running.
Sources: Daily Express
