Wives and mothers of mobilized Russian soldiers are lashing out at the authorities and President Putin personally. They demand the return of their men.
Never before has such a caustic piece of text been published against the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense. In the manifesto that the women published on Monday on their Telegram channel Poetj domoj (‘the road home’), they oppose the indefinite duration of the mobilization. The women call on the Russian people to help them and to sign the petition and share it on the internet.
On September 21, 2022, President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of more than three hundred thousand reservists to fight in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense now also recruits in prisons.
If they survive six months at the front, prisoners are pardoned and can go home, while those mobilized must stay until Russia’s goals in Ukraine are achieved. Ergo: it is completely unclear when they can return to their families.
‘We are fucked’
And then our loved ones were sent to Ukraine. The promises turned out to be empty. Many will never return
In the leaflet, the women and family members complain that the state has turned its back on those who went to fight and their families. “We are being betrayed and destroyed by our own people. We are fucked and you are being fucked,” the women write.
They recall how Putin initially promised that no reservists would be called up and that tasks in the “special military operation”, as Moscow still calls the massacre in Ukraine, would be carried out only by professional volunteers.
“And then our loved ones were sent to Ukraine. The promises turned out to be empty. Many will never return. Mobilization turned out to be a terrible mistake. We were punished for our law-abiding behavior,” the women say.
Lashing out hard at Putin
The manifesto’s authors note that “no one will be protected from their fate in the future.” They called the situation in the country absurd and lashed out at Putin, while expressing the hope that he will listen to them.
“The president has declared 2024 the year of the family. Ironic, when you consider that women cry without their husbands, that children grow up without fathers and that many are already orphans. And a cannibalistic Satanist, who reoffended after his first captivity, is released six months later after atoning for his serial killings in the military operation. Our president still has a sense of humor!”
Last week it was announced that a resident of the Sakhalin region, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2018 on charges of triple murder, had been released to go to Ukraine. The man had eaten a piece of meat from one of his victims, the complaint stated.
Putj Domoy calls for the return of those mobilized and the imposition of a limit on service in Ukraine. The authors of the petition are not interested in turning the country upside down and destabilizing the political situation, they say.
In recent weeks, women have tried to organize protest rallies in various regions of the country in several places in Russia, but the authorities have refused to grant permission. In the Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk regions, women who participated in chat rooms where such actions were discussed were visited at home by police.
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