Vladimir Putin is coming under growing pressure from the families of conscripted soldiers to order their return from the front in Ukraine.
The wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen met just outside the Kremlin to mark 500 days since Putin in September 2022 ordered a “partial mobilisation” following battlefield setbacks in Moscow’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
The call-up was widely unpopular and prompted hundreds of thousands to flee abroad to avoid being drafted.
Wives and relatives of some of the reservists called up in 2022 have campaigned for them to be discharged and replaced with contract soldiers.
Saturday’s demonstration was organized by one such campaign group, The Way Home, that on Friday posted on Telegram calling on “wives, mothers, sisters and children” of reservists from across Russia to come to Moscow to “demonstrate (their) unity.”
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Allies of jailed Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny and Russian opposition politician Maksim Kats voiced support for the protest on Friday, while the Moscow prosecutor’s office early on Saturday warned Russians not to participate in “unauthorized mass events.”
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 signed contracts with the Defence Ministry last year.
Still, the wives’ and relatives’ calls to bring mobilised reservists home have been stonewalled by Russia’s government-controlled media, and some pro-Kremlin politicians have sought to cast them as Western stooges. Protesters on Saturday angrily rejected the accusation.
Maria Andreyeva, whose husband and brother are fighting in Ukraine, told SOTAvision that she saw the fighting in Ukraine as “a great tragedy that happened between two brotherly peoples.”
Andreyeva said: “Almost every Russian has relatives in Ukraine, close and distant, so… this is a situation that has struck us to the core.
“After the Second World War, it seemed to us that our grandfathers died so that there would never be another (conflict).”
