Wives of Russian soldiers protest. They demand rotation at the front
On Sunday, a group of women staged an anti-mobilization protest in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the independent news site Vyorstka reported. Similar protests planned in St. Petersburg were not approved this month, but about 30 women staged a short picket in the Russian capital, Moscow.
This month, relatives of 300,000 soldiers sent to Ukraine as part of the “partial” mobilization soldiers, carried out by President Vladimir Putin, published an appeal on the Telegram channel (“The Road Home”), demanding “total demobilization”.
“Civilians should not participate in hostilities,” the statement read.
“We do not impose political choices regarding power or attitude towards the armed conflict in Ukraine. Everyone has the right to decide for themselves. However, we will support whoever returns our people to us,” they wrote. “We are determined to get our people back at all costs.”
In the city of Chelyabinsk, local authorities suggested that wives of mobilized soldiers meet with the staff of the military registration and conscription office, as well as with the local organization “Combat Brotherhood”, instead of organizing a protest against mobilization.
Police officers also visited several women who were active in Telegram chat rooms where anti-mobilization protests were organized.
Protest by the wives of Russian soldiers. The Kremlin “decided to nip it in the bud”
According to the investigative website IStories, police visited the homes of at least six women in the Kemerovo region, warning them of responsibility for participating in unauthorized protests.
“Apparently they decided to nip it in the bud in case we went to an unauthorized rally because we were denied a sanctioned one,” one woman told IStories, adding that she didn’t know how police officers found the women because their phone numbers were hidden.
In the Krasnoyarsk region, police officers put pressure on relatives of mobilized soldiers, IStories reported.
-“They come to those who were supporters of the rallies and call them with a warning about their responsibility for extremism. We no longer have the right to even think about the rally, they will immediately write us down as enemies of the people,” one of the relatives from the Krasnoyarsk region told IStories.
The wife of a mobilized Russian soldier told Govorit NeMoskva media this month that she had received messages that some soldiers were “taking their hands out of the trenches to get injured and just rest.”
“Some people write: ‘I’m so tired. Let something hit us as soon as possible,'” she said on condition of anonymity.
“This move is not aimed at rotation (of troops), but at demobilization. We believe that those who have been mobilized should be released from service in the armed forces,” she said.
At least 4 thousand 401 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine, the independent website Mediazona reported. The total death toll in Russia is now over 37,000, Mediazona reported.
Mobilized reservists appear to be suffering rapid losses in Ukraine, according to an investigation published in September by IStories and the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) war monitoring project.
An investigation found that only four mobilized soldiers who died in the conflict survived longer than 11 months.
