Mothers and wives of Russian mobilized people demand their return from Ukraine: “I do not wish the terror I feel on anyone”

Vladimir Putin decreed that this, his third year of war against Ukraine, would be the year of the family in Russia.

But now a part of these families are beginning to become a headache for the Government two months before the presidential elections.

A small group of mothers, wives and girlfriends of civilians who were forcibly mobilized by the Kremlin in the fall of 2022 for the war in Ukraine founded a Telegram channel at the end of last summer to raise their voices and call for the return of the soldiers. .

The platform '

On the way home

' —

Put Domói

, in Russian — is already followed by more than 30,000 people.

They constitute a minority group, largely out of fear, but a growing group of women demand measures for their relatives to return home from the front and display their discomfort on the channel, have addressed deputies or held a protest picket.

“I cannot wish on any other woman the terror that I feel,” one of the channel's administrators tells this newspaper, always worried about the possibility of receiving a fatal notification from the Ministry of Defense.

During her breaks, her son can be heard shouting for her on the other end of the phone.

“I have my husband, my brother and some friends at the front,” she laments, although she assures, after asking that her name not appear for her safety, that those affected have no other option than to show her discontent.

“We all tell ourselves the same thing, why be afraid?

I'm more afraid of losing him and blaming myself if I don't do anything at all.”

“There are also many girls who emphasize that they do not want to send anyone to the front,” she points out.

His initiative calls for total demobilization, not the replacement of some soldiers by others, so that only those who want to serve by contract serve in the army.

“We would like the fire to cease, but we don't know how much strength we have to achieve it,” he adds before emphasizing again that his main goal is demobilization.

“We think that if the special military operation ends [as Putin calls the offensive on Ukraine], our men will be back home, but we need a demobilization decree because it is possible that they will be left there or transferred to another place,” insists this channel administrator.

In addition, her group calls for greater control by prosecutors and human rights defenders at recruitment points and that compulsory military service can be replaced by social service away from the front.

Putin ordered his first mobilization on September 21, 2022, despite the fact that the Kremlin itself denied weeks before that it had planned that step.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the objective was to recruit 300,000 civilians, but no figure was included in the decree.

The Kremlin concluded the mobilization in early 2023, but never published another decree or document confirming the end of the process.

The Russian Government then assured that the president's word was enough.

“We formed our platform in the summer [of 2023].

Several girls were in different groups and realized that this wouldn't help.

We all fought alone before and decided to get together,” says the administrator of '

The Way Home

'.

However, they have faced a wall of problems and silence from the Administration.

“At first no one wanted to bring our topic to light, it seemed like a secret locked under seven keys.

If we wrote a question to a governor when he spoke on a live program, he responded to the most banal questions and ignored the hundreds of messages about the return of those mobilized,” he recalls.

After appealing “massively” to the State Duma, the Russian lower house, these women managed to meet with some deputies.

“We were often told that we could solve this problem with a vacation, and that was it,” she recalls.

“There are no rotations there.

Those who are lucky come on vacation and those who are not, unlucky.

More than a year has passed and some of those mobilized have not been home,” she denounces.

Pressure on '

The Road Home

' began to grow after some women or mothers of soldiers conveyed their problem to the Communist Party in November.

“They made the propagandists and the bots [on networks] speak against us, and so on until today: whether we are from the CIA or they pay us from outside,” the administrator denounces.

In addition, Telegram labeled its channel with the “fake” brand after receiving complaints that the identities of some women were allegedly spoofed.

“We asked for a verification request immediately and there was no response.

And several journalists tried to contact Pável Dúrov —founder of Telegram—, but there was no official response either.”

On January 17, the pressure on these women intensified.

Some laid flowers and held individual pickets with signs at the places where the Eternal Flame commemorates Russian soldiers.

According to ' The Way Home'

complaint ,

some members of the E Center wearing balaclavas

—Center for the fight against extremism, of the Ministry of the Interior— approached them in the Metro to identify them.

However, these actions did not frighten them and they repeated the initiative in the following days.

“The action of putting flowers is different for everyone.

Here anyone can put two carnations for the truth of it.

For your freedom.

For his life.

For the life of his loved ones (...).

Honor the memory of our boys or place flowers for “never again,” the group said last weekend.

His channel recalled in another of its publications that Putin declared January 23 the beginning of the year of the family.

"We don't want to answer children a question that is like a knife in the heart every time they ask it: 'When will daddy arrive?'

We don't know the answer.

For some reason no one knows, and apparently neither does the president.

The omniscient and all-powerful president does not know.”

Some of their views on the war differ, but all participants on this platform share their desire for it to end now.

“We also sympathize with the other side,” this channel administrator personally states about the suffering of Ukrainians.

“Their women are also suffering mothers, they bring them the same coffins as us.

There are also ordinary people there, like ours, who simply fell under the roller of this machine.”

Political demonstrations have been

de facto

banned in Russia since the pandemic, although the repression has had several twists with the invasion of Ukraine.

According to the portal specialized in political persecution OVD-Info, some 19,850 people have been arrested since February 24, 2022 for protesting.

For this reason, the Kremlin perceives the demands of the women of those mobilized with suspicion.

Political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R. Politik analysis center, highlights that the actions of these women may be perceived by Putin as a betrayal: “The authorities take seriously the protests that they consider legitimate, such as the demonstrations over the lack of heating, illegal constructions or even radical anti-Semitic speeches, but the protests of the wives of those mobilized, those of Bashkiria - due to the conviction of a defender of the local ethnic group - or the harmless individual pickets in support of political prisoners see them illegitimate and, therefore, they must be harshly repressed.”

The Kremlin faces a delicate issue because the women protesting are the wives of those on whose shoulders the future of the Ukrainian war weighs.

Shortly after the mobilization, Putin staged a meeting with several wives and mothers of military personnel who supported his cause in Ukraine, although it was later learned that many of them had some relationship with the Government.

However, the fear and pain in many homes threatens to open a fissure between the people and the Kremlin.

'

On the way home'

published a video this week on its channel where an alleged Russian soldier confronted police officers for trying to prevent women from offering flowers.

“We will return and ask each of you why you confronted our women while we were confronting the

jojlí

(a derogatory term with which the Russians call the Ukrainians by the traditional Cossack lock, the

oseledets

),” said the soldier. , with their faces covered by a balaclava, encouraging the agents to go to the front instead of pressuring their wives.

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