I agree with you that we can see on videos only what the military authorities want to show to us when they are real and official ones edited on Tv for instance as it seems to be the case for some of them. It is indeed a surprise for me that the authorities want to show at television how are performed the draft physical examination because in France it was very seldom to see photos of the draft process, it was not often allowed to take photos and there was no will to record the exams.
Of course the exams were staged at different times and there was an official requirement to record them and what we see if often what we are expected to see but nevertheless it shows a part of the reality.
For instance I am surprised by the mess in the corridors in most of the videos, I would have expected more discipline among the draftees.
Some are undressed, other ones are not, many persons are walking by the corridors, it does not seem to be efficient !.
It would be interesting to understand what the persons who are questioned on these videos are telling about the draft process. I guess that as there was a lot of complaints of draftees and mothers about the lack of respect of modesty and privacy of the draftees in a recent past, the authorities want to show that now it is different.
So I agree that the fact that the draftees in Russia are wearing boxers or briefs on the videos does not mean that they have never to remove them at an other part of the physical draft examination but it shows that they are not in the nude for a very long time since the beginning of the procedure and not for some casual inspections or check of identity or in front of a commission.
About the presence of women, we know according to a lot of photos and relations that it was and still is a reality and something very casual in Russia, as doctors performing the examinations, or nurses assisting them or even secretaries at some stations or members of a kind of draft board commission as we can see on some videos.
I don't think that we see mothers of draftees on these videos even I have read that sometimes they can come with their sons but I don't believe that they can be present during the examinations.
But even if as you said, there are always some women present, if it is like on the videos, it is not very embarrassing since the draftees are always still dressed or at least only undressed in boxers.
I don't think that as long as they are not naked it makes many of the boys uncomfortable and if they are naked in presence of women, I assume that it is only in presence of doctors or nurses, at least nowadays,
As regards the assumptions of Lars Peterson about draft examinations in Germany at the time of a mandatory military service, I have read his book and I am not convinced by most of them, I believe that he has chosen his witnesses among some boys who could be very more shy towards nudity than most of them, I don't believe that what he relates is not true but he must have questioned much more persons as draftees as well as doctors or nurses to be more right about this kind of physical examination and not consider that all boys were traumatized for a long time or all their life and all the doctors and nurses were enjoying the situations by having a great control and power on the young draftees. If you believe him, almost all the women doctors and nurses or secretaries ( even if I doubt that the assistants of the doctors in the examination room could be secretaries, in my opinion they were all nurses even if they were here only to take notes ) had chosen that job only to see boys in the nude and enjoy to humiliate them.
In my own experience of draft physicals and more generally army physicals, the greater efficiency is the main purpose of the set up and the worst situations was not to be examined alone in an examination room by a woman doctor and a nurse even naked like it was in Germany at the time of the book but to be like in France in the last 60's a large group in the nude going from stations to stations of a medical process through corridors supervised by a lot of non commissioners officers and examined by large groups in front of each other at all stations, even for the most intimate exams, and for almost all a morning, or to be among a large group of naked draftees lining up before going in front of a draft board commission of around a dozen persons including civilian and military ones, not medical ones except one doctor even if there was no women among them and examined from head to toes front and back in front of that commission.