Ai translation from Russian:
“Today they are standing in front of the recruitment office in Moscow,” reports Olessya Gerasimenko on Verstka. The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk and the high salary in the army play a decisive role in this. “The long lines at the recruitment office started forming after August 6, when Ukrainian troops advanced into the Kursk Oblast territory. ‘Now we have 500 people a day; we can barely keep up,’ a psychologist at the recruitment office reported in August. ‘Normally, colleagues were in chill mode, went home at six in the evening, and relaxed in the park during the day. Then Kursk happened, and now they come, and the influx never stops. We are now working until ten in the evening.'”
Many failed existences can be found in the queues. “Construction worker Gennadi served time for theft, then found a girlfriend. ‘We had a child, but it didn’t work out. We weren’t married, though. And then what? I drank and worked, didn’t drink and worked. I had to go and sign the contract so I could start a better life. My life will get on track. I never had a military ID and could never find normal work.'”
Women are also among those signing up. They can, among other roles, join as snipers. “One of them, unmarried, young, and beautiful, says, ‘I will find someone for myself there.’ Another said her husband is at war; they have no children: ‘I don’t want to sit at home and wait for him; I feel bad, so I’m going too.’ A third is a singer and dancer in an ensemble. After performing in Syria and the occupied territories, she decided she’d rather sing patriotic songs with a military rank than as a civilian. Even a mother with two young children reported to the recruitment office—one child was three, the other one year old. One of the informants Verstka spoke to asked her, ‘And the children?’ ‘They’re fine,’ the woman replied, ‘they’ll stay with their grandmother and father.'”