After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military draft triggered an exodus of fighting-age men from the country and sparked violent attacks against army offices, enlistment officials were this week given a new weapon in their recruitment drive arsenal: fish. On the island of Sakhalin in Russia’s far east, local chief Mikhail Shuvalov promised families five kilograms of flounder, pollock, and salmon if they agreed to send their men to join Putin’s war machine in Ukraine. “We take your husband and you get to eat for a few weeks,” Anton Barbashin, a Russian political analyst, said of the policy. “That’s a true indication of poverty officials want everyone to forget.” The shambolic call-up has been hit by a litany of embarrassments, including one region having to send half of its recruits home because they were deemed unfit, while on Wednesday a 34-year-old Moscow local said he’d been drafted despite being born blind.
