Snipers, airplane pilots or even soldiers… Over the centuries, some Russian female soldiers have contributed to Russia’s war effort. And “not only as canteens or nurses”, according to Jean Radvanyi, geographer, geopolitical scientist and author of Russiaa vertigo of power.
From the First World War, Russian female battalions were born. Nearly 5,000 female soldiers served in the fall of 1917, but only the 1st Russian female death battalion and the Petrograd battalion were deployed on the front. A feminization operated because of the heavy Russian human losses at that time. For Jean Radvanyi, “it was not necessarily the will of the command. This was due to the fact that they needed soldiers in general”. During World War II, other women stood out in combat, such as sniper Lyudmila Pavlyuchenko. She would have killed 309 Nazis alone.
5% of Russian military personnel are women
If the military body tends to feminize since, according to the sociological study To serve or to fight? What do women seek in the Russian Army? by Elena Lysak, only 5% of military personnel were women in 2016. A relatively low figure when compared to European armies. For example, during the same period, they represented 15% of the workforce in France.
While the toll of Russian losses in Ukraine is growing ever heavier, with nearly 129,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion, could Vladimir Putin mobilize women at the front? The answer in the video placed at the top of this article…