Each end of the month, war is invited into its mailbox. Piotr, a computer student in Oufa, a big city west of the Urals, follows by far the“Special military operation” Launched by the Kremlin against Ukraine, on February 24, 2022. The dynamic twenty, the young man talks above all about his start-up projects in computer systems. But, in a word, he also tells how “This war which is not ours accompanies our daily lives”.
In the fall of 2022, like so many other young people from his campus, he feared that the mobilization hops it and sends it to the front. His status as a student and expert in computer science has since earned him to be exempt. “On the other hand, the recruitment of volunteers has continued to intensify. I see it in my mail ”quips Piotr. In its mailbox: the monthly electricity bill. On the back: the reproduction of the poster, glued all over the city, which details the sums offered to any volunteer for “Join the Victory Army”as the official slogan promises.
With great advertising reinforcement, the Ministry of Defense organizes, with the regional administrations of all over the country, this local recruitment of men ready to leave. A hidden mobilization, to attract volunteers without provoking the panic of the official mobilization of the fall of 2022. It is a necessity, while the conflict drags and the front has widen, from Crimea to Koursk , Russian region partially occupied by the Ukrainian army since the summer of 2024.
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Source: Lemonde