Only 'Old Men' Are Going Into Battle
5- 25.02.2025, 17:24
- 6,518
Most of the liquidated Russian invaders in Ukraine are about 50 years old.
As you know, old conscripts were called "old men" in the Soviet and Russian army. In the popular film about the Great Patriotic War, the "old men" were fighter pilots (newcomers from the flight school turned into them after a few months of fighting). But the real grandfathers and old men are fighting against Ukraine for the money allocated by Vladimir Putin.
There are even 70-year-olds in the database of Russians who died in the war unleashed by Putin in Ukraine published by Mediazona and the BBC. One of them is Yuri Bushkovsky from Veliky Ustyug, who could have celebrated this anniversary this year, but died in battle in November last year. Alexander Sysoev died at the age of 69 after being wounded. Mikhail Shuvalov (71 years old) was killed while serving in the Luhansk region.
Putin's army that invaded Ukraine consisted mainly of regular troops, after September 2022, the list of dead began to be quickly replenished by mobilized, by the beginning of 2023 – criminals, the Wagnerites and fighters of other private military companies. But then, not wanting to announce a new mobilization, Putin put the war on a commercial footing. And many men of mature, pre-retirement and retirement age went to die for money, according to an age analysis of the Mediazona and BBC databases conducted by the Financial Times. Among the dead contract soldiers, the most people are aged 46-47 years; in second place – contract soldiers of 48-49 years, in third place – 44-45.
In a database of more than 95,300 people, the number of contract servicemen over the age of 50 exceeds 4,000; among personnel and mobilized servicemen there are less than 500 representatives of this age group, among former prisoners – 869.
The reasons why older people are more active in the war can be different: the experience gained in previous wars, the need for urgent solutions to financial problems or problems with the law, or the fact that, according to statistics, older Russians are more susceptible to TV-propaganda.
A typical "volunteer" who signs up for a war today, say, in Moscow, "is a person who comes to the military enlistment office with the whole family, and everyone understands what he is doing," says sociologist Kirill Rogov, a visiting researcher at the Institute of Humanities in Vienna. In Moscow, for the first year of participation in the "special military operation", a person will receive from 5.2 million rubles (taking into account payments from the city government and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation), theDobrovolets.Moscow website reports. This is a one-time payment for signing contracts in the amount of 2.3 million and a monthly allowance of 260,000 rubles. You can "earn" more – up to 1 million rubles is promised "for combat achievements in the NEO zone".
Going to kill and die, such a person provides a good life for his relatives – which he could not do in Putin's peaceful economy. The contract works as a social elevator for his family, Rogov explains:
This money will be used to buy an apartment for his son, who has just married... and another son who is going to go to university.
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