A famous Soviet song recreated a letter from a man to a girl where he sent her regards and asked her to lie to her parents.
"Hello, little sister.
How are you?
Just don't tell mom I'm in Afghanistan,” the refrain read.
Years later, the country was replaced by Chechnya.
That topic does not yet have a version on Ukraine, but some mothers and girlfriends of the military have begun to lose patience with the development of the offensive.
Not because of the war itself —whether it is fair or not seems secondary to many of them—, but because of the conditions in which their loved ones have been sent to the front and because their whereabouts are unknown.
The Kremlin, aware from the experience of past wars of the enormous pressure that can be exerted against it, tries to stop this snowball.
On Thursday, the leader of the Council of Mothers and Wives and two activists who were traveling with her at a roadblock in the Samara region in the south-west of the country were arrested.
“We believe they were waiting for our vehicle on purpose.
They told us that they had reason to suppose that we were transporting drugs," the head of the association, Olga Tsukánova, later recounted.
All three were taken to the police station.
An administrative process was opened against one of them for the alleged dissemination of extremist materials.
Within a few hours all of them were released.
“This system is afraid of popular unity.
They are afraid of us and are launching themselves against the women who protect their children," Tsukánova wrote this Saturday in an open letter.
Her association, founded in September, has served as a catalyst for thousands of women who found no other alternative to express their complaints about the situation of their loved ones at the front.
The Council of Mothers and Wives has been promoted by a minority organization, the Union of All Peoples for the Renaissance of Russia, which advocates "returning to the point where the Soviet Union collapsed and restoring from there the USSR practically and legally". .
However, some media related to the Kremlin, such as Life.ru, accuse the group of having alleged links with opponents and foreigners with the aim of stirring up the conscience of Russian families, "because any normal person suffers and sympathizes with these sacred words : 'soldier's mother'.
His followers reject these accusations.
“In our country any opposition is [considered] at least by extremist people, scammers or sectarians.
All sponsored by the CIA, of course," Yulia denounced in a video.
“These women defend our country better than men,” she added.
The only evidence presented against them has been an alleged extract from a videoconference where a journalist from a Belarusian media outlet appeared in exile.
The association has declined to speak to EL PAÍS after the new legislation that prohibits mentioning details about the mobilization came into force.
The punishment includes everything from fines to entering the blacklist of foreign agents.
However, his channel already has more than 20,000 followers and new complaints from mothers of the military appear every day.
missing children
“There is no support for mothers looking for their children.
Some are in captivity, others nothing is known.
We go to the morgues and the military authorities and no one helps us, they throw us out from all sides”, denounced Yulia, from the Siberian Kuzbáss mining basin, days ago.
Irina Chistyakova, whose son was missing for almost eight months before learning that he was in prison, stated in another video that only this association gave her a hand.
The International Committee of the Red Cross was able to see several Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war this week.
Although it described this visit as "an important step to preserve humanity in the midst of the brutality of the conflict", the international organization denounced that "it must have unimpeded access to all prisoners to see them repeatedly, in private and wherever they are".
The Council of Mothers and Wives also ensures that the mobilization is fair.
At the beginning of October, he addressed President Vladimir Putin and the Ministry of Defense with a simple question: “Have the children of high-ranking officials, oligarchs and TV stars been mobilized?
If not, for what reason?
In those days, the son of Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, was the subject of a prank call from an alleged recruitment center.
Peskov's son responded to the false call that he could not be called up, adding that he would take his summons "on another level."
Almost three months after the start of the mobilization, irregularities are still taking place, which can pose a problem for the Kremlin.
For example, despite the official end of the conscription, several citizens of Uzbekistan and Belarus who did not even have Russian citizenship have been called up in Chelyabinsk.
And another example: Marina, the wife of the mobilized Alexander Stiopkin, could only turn to the Council of Mothers and Wives to implore help because, parents of a disabled child, her recruitment center "does not have internet to process the documents" that exempt her from going in front.
“The mail will arrive in January,” they told him.
Without getting into politics
Until now, the Committee of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia, the most prestigious organization of its kind in the country, has had fewer problems.
Founded in 1989, in the throes of the Soviet Union, it brings together more than fifty local groups and has managed to stay out of the sieve suffered by other more activist associations thanks to its absolute neutrality.
Their role in this war has been limited to collecting money, food, clothing and medicine for the military, as well as offering legal assistance to those they felt did not meet the criteria for conscription.
Despite this exquisite neutrality, the Kremlin did not call its representatives to meet with Putin on November 25 along with other mothers of soldiers.
All criticism had to be filtered, and this association receives hundreds of messages a day with all kinds of claims.
“My brother volunteered and has not received his salary for five months of service.
We wrote to the Military Prosecutor's Office and the Human Rights Commissioner, and the result is zero.
The lines of the Ministry of Defense are constantly busy”, said Anna, from Briansk, in one of the thousands of complaints written in the forum with which this organization attends to relatives.
Another recurring complaint is that medical reasons are underestimated.
“My son went to the recruiting office to allege health reasons (he was previously diagnosed with first degree hypertension).
In the medical examination at the center they ignored the documents, they did not let him leave and the same day they sent him to the army.
They only allowed him to write a complaint.
What to do?" Sergei Ivanov denounced in the same group.
During the first weeks of the mobilization, some women's protests arose in the provinces most affected by the conscription, although they soon dissolved when they were repressed.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country, but others also volunteered.
Many more have come between fatalism and resignation.
“They don't care, they have nothing to do with their lives.
In Siberia there is no future and they tell me that this is, at least, something different”, a young woman who asked not to be identified told this newspaper.
When the mobilization was known, she feared that they would call her cousins and her brother.
The first were recruited.
Other Russian mothers and women consider the sacrifices of their boys a heroic act.
During her meeting with Putin, a woman recalled the death of her son Konstantin Pshenichkin: “The enemy was approaching his positions.
He jumped out of the trench and called for fire (on his position).
His last words were: 'Come on, guys, let's mince the ukros [pun on the Russian translation for dill and Ukrainian]'.
For others, however, the war has changed their lives in another way.
Zinaida, whose son died at the front shortly after being mobilized, thanked the government on November 27, Mother's Day in Russia, for having woken her up.
“Cruelly and painfully, but you have awakened me.
From my mother's soul I wish you to go through this life the hell that you have made us go through ”, she stressed without taking her eyes off for a second in the message that the now dangerous Council of Mothers and Wives
spread
.
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