Family values or combative values? Russia is grappling with the role of women in war.
The Russian military is gradually expanding the role of women as it seeks to balance President Vladimir V. Putin's promotion of traditional family roles with the need for new recruits for the war in Ukraine.The military's growing appeal to women includes efforts to recruit female inmates from prisons, replicating on a much smaller scale a strategy that has swelled its ranks with male inmates. Recruiters in military uniforms visited Russian women's prisons in the fall of 2023, offering inmates pardons and $2,000 a month – 10 times the national minimum wage – in exchange for serving in front-line roles for a year, according to six current sources and former prisoners from three prisons in different regions of Russia.Dozens of inmates from those prisons have signed military contra...