In recent days, several rallies have taken place in various cities across Ukraine.
kyiv, Odessa, Zaporizhia, Lviv but also small towns like Ivano-Frankivsk or Ternopil, in the west of the country.
In the coastal city of Odessa as elsewhere, it was mainly women who took to the streets with slogans like
“fair length of service”
.
They are asking for a rotation of their husbands, sons or brothers who have been mobilized for almost two years.
“They have the right to rest and rehabilitation.
The soldiers are in a difficult physical and mental state,”
explains a demonstrator whose testimony was collected by the Ukrainian media
Komentarii.ua.
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In the far west of the country in Lviv, several dozen women came to demonstrate.
Most of them with their strollers where the children are holding signs that read
“bring my father home”
.
Some display the slogan
“my husband didn’t take a one-way ticket”
.
In each of the small towns of Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil in the west of the country, around twenty demonstrators gathered to protest.
“Why have the same people been fighting for two years,”
says one of them.
On the banks of the Dnieper, in Zaporizhia, some demonstrators marched wearing military uniforms belonging to their husbands.
“I put on the uniform of my husband who volunteered in the first days of the war.
A teacher by profession, he now serves in the ranks of the Zaporizhzhia assault brigade,”
says a demonstrator, before continuing,
“we are fighting so that men have the right to return after 18 months if they do so. wish.
So that this is established at the legislative level.
Men should have rights.
Without rights for soldiers, we are not a democratic state,”
she claims
.
The Ukrainian national press agency
Ukrinform,
which reported this interview, also reported protests in cities in the east of the country, in Poltava, Kropyvnytskyi, Dnipro, and even Zhytomyr.
A bill at the center of debates
At the end of December 2023, the executive studied a controversial bill on tightening mobilization rules.
It plans, among other things, to lower the age of convocation from 27 to 25 years and to introduce sanctions for those who resist mobilization.
The Ukrainian Parliament nevertheless deemed it
“contrary to human rights”
and sent it back to the executive for review.
This project has a double challenge, the mobilization could both concern more young people, but at the same time allow a rotation of soldiers at the front.
Volodymyr Zelensky declared during a press conference on December 20 that it would be necessary to mobilize 450,000 to 500,000 men
“in the near future”.
The implementation of this law could make his task easier.
A few days ago, the Ukrainian president recognized the forced recruitment of soldiers.
“Some representatives of the military enlistment offices walked the streets looking for men who refused to mobilize voluntarily, but that was a mistake,”
he admitted.
According to him, the bill is supposed to prevent the repetition of this scenario.
Even before this law was mentioned, previous demonstrations had already taken place in several major cities in the country last December.
Around 600 women gathered in kyiv to protest against the exhaustion of their sons and husbands.