The ongoing military conflict in Ukraine is very often compared in our mainstream media with World War I in that much of the fighting is trench warfare. Air forces are not engaged. The only flying objects other than artillery projectiles are drones and some ground-hugging helicopters. There is no aerial bombing, just launch of air to ground missiles at distances measuring hundreds if not thousands of kilometers from targets. And while much of the trench warfare is also going on at some distance via artillery barrages, some of it is very personal and up close, with distances separating the combatants measured in a hundred meters or less.
What we lose sight of in this comparison with The Great War, as it is still known here in Belgium, in France and in the United Kingdom is exactly who the soldiers were then and who they are today.
In WWI, they were young men of all classes. The war was democratic in the demographic sense, because it had been oversold to the population and social elites were very much present on the front lines in the officer caste, by patriotic and romantic choice and not necessarily by government order. The net result was the loss of an entire generation of brave and public spirited males by the Western Powers and that was reflected in culture generally.
What I see now in the video reports on Russian television from the front lines is very different from all that. The soldiers are mostly in their late 20s with a large contingent clearly in their 30s and 40s. When the Russian television interviewers turn their attention to units of volunteers, the age group goes still higher, likely well into the 60s. That fact was further amplified last night on the 8pm Vesti news program which had a feature segment on those applying via their local military command centers to sign on as kontraktniki. That is the Russian term for professional soldiers who are given an induction premium of about 2500 euros in ruble equivalent and thereafter receive a monthly salary of 2400 euros or more, depending on their professional qualifications and duties to be assigned. The kontraktniki also get other financial benefits including a moratorium on repayment of any debt they hold and availability for heavily subsidized home mortgage loans. Given the average Russian civilian salaries that come to ten times less, it is obvious why there seems to be no shortage of motivated candidates at the recruitment centers.
No one in our media seems interested in the age of war question as it applies to the Russian army. Doing so would spoil their meme about how the Russian general command is sending untrained youths into the meat grinder in Bakhmut and other front line hot spots. This is absolutely false. From the very outset Putin issued an order that new recruits to the armed forces be kept at home, within the borders of the Russian Federation and not be sent to front lines in Donbas. Why? That is another good question which we can answer with an educated guess: to avoid creating a new demographic hole such as Russia experienced in the 1990s during the collapse of the economy and widespread pauperization. By protecting youth against untimely death on the battle field, the Kremlin is giving them time to marry and create offspring before they go to war. In the same vein, it bears mention that Putin has ordered that the age for first induction of males into the Army be raised substantially, and that will introduced in phases in coming years.
On a visit to Petersburg after the Covid restrictions were lifted and before the September 2022 call-up of 300,000 reservists, I had a long talk with our favorite taxi driver in the St Petersburg suburb of Pushkin. He was expecting to be called-up and was not worried in the least. His thinking was pretty much in line with the Russian авось, which may be loosely translated as Inshallah or que sera sera, that is to say a calm form of fatalism. I would put his age at about 48. He explained himself to me: ‘I have a daughter, I have enjoyed a good life, and I have nothing to lose by rejoining the army!’
In fact, my Pushkin taxi driver was called up as a reservist and he is now serving in an administrative post located not too far away from Pushkin.
Of course, in our present age, when some soldiers on the front are being issued spades to dig their trenches along with grenades and automatic rifles of the latest design, for many others in uniform war has been shaped by IT to a very great extent. Computer skills know no age limits and are not dependent on the number of push-ups you can perform. The people analyzing the images and data coming in from reconnaissance and strike drones can just as easily be 60 as 18.
If there is anything about the ongoing war that looks like human progress, it is that very fact. War as being fought in Donbas is not about old men sending young men to their deaths. It is a closer approximation of the whole of male society and a tranche of female society at war.
I have not mentioned the Ukraine side, but from the videos of prisoners of war shown on Russian television, it would appear that their foot soldiers are also men of a certain age, not kids. There the reasons may be different, namely the mass illegal flight of conscription age males across the border to Europe in private cars before the government could clamp down and seal its borders. These are the healthy young Ukrainians I see strolling our boulevards in Brussels. Of course, no one from the BBC bothers to visit and ask these chaps what they are doing here. But that is an issue for another day.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023