A group of women are publicly criticising the Russian authorities. Their husbands are among the 300,000 reservists mobilised by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine in autumn 2022.
And they want them home.
“When will our husbands be considered to have discharged their military duty?” asks Maria. “When they’re brought back with no arms and legs? When they can’t do anything at all because they’re just vegetables? Or do we have to wait for them to be sent back in zinc coffins?”
The women met via social media and have formed a group called The Way Home. They have differing views on the war. Some claim to support it. Others are sceptical about the Kremlin’s “special military operation”. What seems to unite them is the belief that the mobilised men have done their fair share of the fighting and should be back home with their families.
It is an opinion the authorities do not share.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Curiously Mr Nadezhdin is one of the few government critics who has been allowed onto national television since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian women campaigning for the return of their mobilised husbands, sons or brothers have come in for criticism from different quarters.
"Can you imagine a delegation of wives coming to the Kremlin in autumn 1942 and telling Stalin: 'Let those men who were called up in 1941 go home.
Maria Andreeva, whose husband and cousin have been drafted and despatched to Ukraine, finds Mr Kartapolov’s comments insulting.
Antonina claims that, despite being diagnosed with stomach ulcers, her partner was deployed to an assault unit in Ukraine.
But if he really does see us as traitors and outcasts for wanting our husbands back, I don’t understand why he’d have this attitude towards citizens who once voted for him."
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