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The Kremlin silences the pain of Russian women who criticize the war in Ukraine

2022-11-25T22:20:08.798Z


Putin meets with mothers of soldiers sent to the front lines in an attempt to curb discontent with the forced mobilization. Those summoned, related to the Government, avoided criticism


Many Russian mothers demand answers and winter clothes for their children in Ukraine.

But at the table where 17 of them sat this Friday with President Vladimir Putin, no protest against the government was heard.

The president, aware that his future also depends on the opinion of millions of ordinary citizens, staged the meeting to show his concern to the thousands of women who anxiously await the return of their loved ones.

It was a meeting measured in detail: broadcast on a delayed basis, with several Kremlin-friendly politicians among those called, all of them mothers of volunteers and professional soldiers supposedly delighted to go to the front.

Outside were those who have protested in recent weeks because their children have been taken from them with the forced mobilization decreed at the end of September.

“Thank you very much, Vladimir Vladimirovich”, was the main message from all those present each time their turn came.

The climate of that conversation is summed up in the moment in which an assistant addressed the Russian leader to praise his offensive.

"Thank you, as a mother, for defending our homeland," the woman told him, dressed in a uniform with several medals on her lapel.

“We are doing the right thing to defend the Russian Federation from the fascists,” Putin replied.

Two days earlier, the Council of Mothers and Wives, a movement of relatives formed as a result of the mobilization, had addressed Putin through social networks to demand a meeting with those other women who did not want war in their homes.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, are you a man or what?

Have the courage to meet face to face, not with women out of pocket with an agreement, but with real women who have come to Moscow from different cities," Olga Tsukanova, promoter of the group, claimed through a video.

None of them were invited to the event on Friday.

According to the Russian president, his army "takes its losses into account" and barely occupies 38% of the beds in its military hospitals, while the Ukrainian "is used as cannon fodder" and "shoots those who withdraw from their positions”.

However, the Ministry of Defense has only offered an official number of casualties among its forces three times.

The last one, on September 21, assured that they had barely had 5,937 deaths compared to some 60,000 Ukrainians.

Western figures, however, raise those losses several times and put them on the same level as the Ukrainian ones.

Mark Milley, chief of the US General Staff, assured on November 10 that he estimated that the number of dead and wounded Russian soldiers amounted to about 100,000, a figure equivalent to that of the Ukrainian side.

"Victory is ours," said another mother who wanted to send a message "to those who doubt Russia."

Before, the president had stressed that those mothers were an example.

“Everything comes from the family,” Putin stressed at the beginning of his speech, noting that his children “chose to defend the homeland;

protect our people, in this case Novorossiya, Donbas, thanks to the personal example” of their parents, “not by any order or moralization”.

The meeting was held at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogariovo, and several regime politicians were soon identified among the attendees: Olga Béltseva, deputy from Putin's United Russia party;

Yulia Bélejova, head of the Moscow executive committee of the All-Russian Popular Front;

Marina Migunova, member of the Orejovo-Zuevo Social Chamber;

Irina Tas-Ool, head of the Family Department of a Tuva district;

and Nadezhda Uzunova, head of the

Combat Brotherhood

movement .

Also, next to Putin sat a filmmaker who directs patriotic films, Olesya Shígina.

The meeting had been scheduled on the eve of Mother's Day in Russia, and representatives of many other war-affected households were not invited to it.

According to a conservative estimate, more than 400,000 Russians could pass through Ukraine: the more than 100,000 armed forces professionals deployed before the invasion, according to Western intelligence sources, and more than 300,000 civilians mobilized since September, according to official figures. of the Kremlin.

“Have the courage to meet face to face”

The tone of the Council of Mothers and Wives was infinitely harsher than that of the mothers of soldiers assembled by Putin.

“We have come to learn the truth about our husbands, sons, brothers.

We do not demand anything supernatural, we just want to know the truth”, lamented Daria, one of the affected women, on the Telegram channel of that movement.

"Where are they?

How are they?

We dress our soldiers ”, she denounced after arriving in the capital from Lipetsk.

This topic was passed on tiptoe during the meeting.

“My son writes me that he needs this, this and this.

In Krasnodar there are good stores and I send it to him," a mother told Putin, who barely responded with promises: "I talk about this every day with the Defense Ministry."

Neither was any representative of a highly revered NGO in Russia, the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, invited to the event.

“If they call us, we will think about it.

What should we talk about with Putin?

We are an organization for peace,”

the foundation's executive secretary, Valentina Melníkova , told the

Viorstka newspaper.

The mission of this NGO is to advise and offer legal assistance to the military in cases of abuse within the army.

In his brief initial intervention, Putin admitted that he had already spoken in the past with some of the women present at the table and with their children: “Sometimes I speak directly on the phone with them, with the boys.

Some surprised me by their state of mind, by how they deal with this issue.

They didn't expect my calls, also made through their mothers, by the way.

I have reasons to say that they are heroes”.

One of the main complaints has been the recruitment of minorities.

Putin took advantage of the meeting to say that "all ethnic groups are equal and help each other" in the war.

In addition, he joked with the memory of the second war in Chechnya when talking about enlistment in the Caucasus.

"The people there have a special temperament, I know it very well from 1999," said the president.

The girlfriends and mothers of those mobilized have played a very important role in the protests that followed Putin's decree of September 21.

In Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria, two regions where recruitment has been most intense, hundreds of them took to the streets and confronted security forces, who even fired into the air.

“Send your people there” and “'No to war!'

were some of his screams in videos that went viral.

As reported by the Kremlin, some children of the guests have died or been injured in Ukraine.

One of them, the son of Irina Tas-Ool, from Tuva, has been declared an invalid: he spent six months in a hospital after being crushed by a vehicle that overturned in an explosion, and is now continuing his rehabilitation at another clinic.

At least three of those present lost their loved ones in Ukraine.

In the case of Galia Sujóvskaya, she lost her only son, who was posthumously awarded the Order of Valor after dying in Bucha in March and left behind a wife and a daughter.

Nina Pshenichkina's son died before the all-out invasion in February, passing away in 2019 after serving five years under the umbrella of the self-proclaimed “Lugansk People's Republic”.

Putin also regretted not having annexed Donbas earlier.

“As for 2014, we're all smart in hindsight,” he admitted to mothers who applauded the president for his war.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-11-25

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