How Russians Serve the State: In Battle, and in Childbirth

What the Kremlin wants from Russians now boils down to two things.Men should join the army.

Women should have more children.In recent months, the Russian government has doubled sign-up bonuses for contract soldiers and blanketed the airwaves, social media and city streets with recruitment ads.At the same time, President Vladimir V.

Putin has decreed that increasing births is a national priority, an effort that entered a newly repressive phase last week with a bill that would outlaw any advocacy for a child-free lifestyle.The two campaigns are separate, but in wartime Russia, they are also two sides of the same coin: the Kremlin’s increasingly aggressive attempt to enlist regular Russians in reshaping their country to prevail over the West.For the short term, Mr.Putin’s army needs more soldiers.

It is suffering 1,000 casualties per day, by Western estimates, in a war of attrition in Ukraine that shows no sign of ending.And for the long term, in Mr.

Putin’s view, Russia needs more people — to underpin an economy increasingly isolated from the West, to reduce the country’s reliance on immigration, and, of course, to provide the recruitment pool for any future wars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....