Wives of mobilised soldiers hold rare protest demanding their return

AP:

A group of about 20 women got down on their knees outside Russia’s defense ministry on Monday to hold a rare protest and demand the return of their mobilised soldier husbands and sons from Ukraine.

Groups of women who are the relatives of men who were mobilised into the Russian army by President Vladimir Putin have been holding small-scale protests for months.

The women behind Monday’s protest asked for a meeting with Russia’s new minister of defense, Andrei Belousov, to demand that the men be allowed to return home, and that authorities impose limits on how long soldiers can serve before they can be granted leave. They are also demanding that mobilised men are replaced with contract soldiers who have agreed to fight.

Russian authorities labelled the group on Friday as a “foreign agent”, following several protests. The designation is a tactic used by Moscow to silence dissent.

Videos and photos shared on social media showed a group of women, some with school-age children and children in strollers kneeling outside the defense ministry holding banners. The child of one mobilised soldier was pictured wearing a T-shirt that read “Bring back dad”.

A woman who shared a livestream of the protest on social media said the protesters did not invite journalists because of fears they would be detained. However, one of the videos she shared showed a police van and police officers waiting by the defense ministry. She indicated that the women later went home.

The solution to the problem, her post said, is to “finish” the war in Ukraine “and stop lying, or carry out a second wave of mobilisation, and also stop lying,” or to return the men who were mobilised.

Putin ordered a “partial mobilisation” of up to 300,000 reservists following battlefield setbacks in Moscow’s full-scale war against Ukraine in September 2022. It sparked a rush for flights and long queues at Russia’s borders as men tried to flee.

Aware of the public backlash, the Russian military has since late 2022 increasingly sought to bolster the forces in Ukraine by enlisting more volunteers. The authorities claimed that about 500,000 men signed contracts with the defense ministry last year.