“Hail, my brave warrior!” In Russia, successes and setbacks of the Dom Juans of the war in Ukraine

Thursday 28th November 2024 03:03 AM

Published on November 28, 2024 at 08:01. / Modified on November 28, 2024 at 08:35.

3 mins. reading

Since the start of the war in February 2024, groups and sites for meeting soldiers have experienced exponential development in Russia.
On the sites, the women who search for them are very interested in the soldiers on the Ukrainian front but never broach the question of the war.
Between the men who multiply their conquests and the women who seek above all to benefit from their generous pay, there are many disillusionments.

When Alexandre posted a photo of himself in uniform and armed to the teeth, his face barely visible under the hood of his fatigues, he perhaps did not expect such an avalanche of proposals. “Handsome kid!”, “Write to me,” “Hello my brave warrior!”… Some more and more concrete: “Come see me, we are neighbors” or “When I look at you, I want to put myself in the kitchen for you. Alexandre had limited himself to indicating just his first name and his nom de guerre – Binocular (binoculars) – a sign that he is participating in what is still called in Russia “the special military operation” in Ukraine.

This recent exchange, like so many others of this kind, took place on one of the specialized groups on the VKontakte network, the “Russian Facebook” created around ten years ago by a certain Pavel Durov. Since the start of the war in February 2024, these groups and sites for meeting soldiers have experienced exponential growth, going from a few hundred subscribers to several tens of thousands. There are now around thirty of them and the number of their subscribers is growing every day.

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