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The Russian President is planning a rapid expansion of his Yunarmia as he hopes to amass one million young recruits ahead of next year’s 75th anniversary commemorations of the end of World War 2. However critics have slammed the conscription of boys and girls as “immoral” and resembling the Hitler Youth programme. The move coincides with a senior Russian military official’s outburst that children in Russia have become “afraid of machine guns” since the fall of the Soviet Union, a development which he declared as not “normal”.

Russia’s childrens ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova is now backing the controversial move that could see the mass recruitment of up to 50,000 Russian orphans join the Yunarmia.

Ms Kuznetsova has demanded her regional officials, whose role is to safeguard the interests of children, play an active part in recruiting direct from orphanages for Yunarmia, claimed Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

Supporters say the youth army, set up in 2015 and now numbering more than 350,000, keeps children out of trouble while fostering patriotism for Russia.

However critics have accused the Yunarmia’s forced recruitment of orphans as being inappropriate because children under state care would not be able to refuse service and say it is evidence of the increased militarisation of Russia amid deteriorating relations with the West.