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War in Ukraine

Olga Maltseva

RIGA, Latvia — The loved ones of the drafted Russian soldiers forced to fight in Ukraine indefinitely have tried everything: They appealed to the Defense Ministry, wrote letters to President Vladimir Putin, met with many officials and even protested publicly. Their questions to Putin’s annual “direct line” call-in show for Russians last week were ignored.

They mounted car sticker campaigns calling for the return of their husbands and sons, and crafted Christmas tree ornaments with the words, “Bring Papa home.” They posted impassioned video messages on social media.

The Kremlin has rebuffed them. Yet they have emerged as the only wild card in Putin’s highly stage-managed election campaign that will allow him to rule until at least 2030.

Moscow glows triumphant as front freezes and Western aid for Ukraine stalls

In this highly charged atmosphere, the Kremlin is determined to stifle any dissent, but there is no easy answer to women furious that their sons and husbands are being forced to fight on until the end of the war.

Russian authorities have sent agents of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to question soldiers whose wives are involved, according to an increasingly strident Telegram group, “The Way Home,” which is leading the campaign to bring men home. Military officers have threatened to send soldiers into front-line assault operations, unless they silence their wives, it reports.

“Your methods are very dirty. You are trying to calm our anger by putting pressure on our relatives. Keep in mind that we can lose them at any moment. You are playing with their lives and ours,” according to a Dec. 19 post on the channel. “These are the obvious methods of cowards and rats.”

A day earlier, the channel urged Putin to end the war “or go to the front yourself and die.”

Putin took no questions from such women in his direct line show but dashed their hopes by ruling out a new round of mobilization that would allow exhausted contract and drafted soldiers — who have been fighting for a year or more — to go home.

Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, based in France, said that Putin’s decision was irreversible and seen as necessary to avoid the public furor that accompanied the 2022 call-up that mobilized at least 300,000 men for the war.

“There will be no pity. And the Kremlin will try to keep them silent. And if there will be some more radicalized actions, they will resort to more repressive measures,” she said.

A single mother of a soldier sent to fight in Ukraine more than a year ago against his will, said men were being sent “to slaughter” in suicidal battle missions, sometimes calling their wives beforehand to give their grim goodbyes.

“I’m an ordinary village woman, and my son couldn’t even kill a chicken, and now all this has happened,” said the woman, whom The Washington Post is not identifying because she could be jailed for criticizing the military under Russia’s draconian censorship laws.

“Every day you live in fear and worry. You live from one text message to another message,” she said. He and his unit “just can’t continue there; they don’t have any more strength.”

He refused to follow an order to storm an enemy position and was kept in a squalid military prison for a week with others, she said.

“I wrote letters to deputies and the president’s office. In response, we received only bureaucratic replies.”

Wives of Russian soldiers plead for their return from war

A soldier named Alexander, mobilized in the southern Russian city of Voronezh, posted a video on “The Way Home” this week while on a short military break, saying that all the mobilized soldiers wanted to go home.

“Everyone’s very tired. So what? Nobody cares,” he said. “We don’t need anything. Just let us go home. Everyone wants to go home,” adding that military leaders could stretch out the war “for as long as you want.”

As Putin exudes confidence, claiming that Ukraine and the West have failed to defeat Russia, he projects a victory just around the corner. Huge illuminated signs in Moscow read “Russia — country of victors.” Those who dissent are targets.

“They pretend that we do not exist,” the mother said. “They call us traitors to the motherland. It makes you feel disappointment, resentment, annoyance and perhaps all the negative feelings. The question constantly arises ... How can we be treated like this?”

U.S. intelligence estimates that 315,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, but in Russia the numbers are secret and officials from Putin down are conveying the message that sending your son to Ukraine is patriotic and right.

His recent orchestrated announcement that he would run for reelection involved several pro-war parents whose sons were killed in Ukraine, clamoring for him to run again.

Mikhail Klimentyev

“It’s a signal that the Kremlin would like to send to the society that this is a behavior we would like to see from the society — that even these people who lost the most precious they have in their lives still stand by Putin,” Stanovaya said.

At the ceremony for Putin’s campaign announcement, Maria Kostyuk, whose son died in the war, told the president that “our guys are on the front lines performing their duty, and we are in the rear, and our guys did not leave their front, so do not leave us.” She is employed by the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, a state-backed body founded by Putin that promotes the war and is chaired by one of his relations.

Russia will win war in Ukraine, Putin tells news conference and call-in show

A 26-year-old woman from a small Russian city, with a young son, felt as though society was cracking apart when her husband was mobilized on Oct. 26, 2022. The woman, whom The Post is not identifying for security reasons, is a member of “The Way Home.”

She said law-abiding people obeyed the mobilization order “and then the country betrayed them.” Meanwhile, she said, the sons of Russia’s elite were spared.

“My husband’s mood is that, ‘We are here to the very end, and maybe we will never return.’ When he calls me, you can hear the explosions in the background, and it’s really frightening.”

Clamping down on the women is delicate, Stanovaya said, with the Kremlin determined to maintain control but avoid a scandal and the impression that the federal government is cracking down. Regional governors were ordered to somehow make the women “disappear from informational space.”

“If you try to send 100 policemen to arrest these women, it will make a lot of noise in the public space, so it’s not an option,” she said.

Igor Generalov

Instead, a range of other methods have been deployed to undermine them. State television propagandists called them traitors and Nazi collaborators. Slick videos from rival groups of military women have condemned them.

Olga Lesnova, a lawmaker in Ugra, in southern Russia, held classes for soldiers’ wives on “how to get rid of resentment toward the world.” Officials have infiltrated the Telegram channel, and FSB officials have questioned women about planned protests, according to “The Way Home.”

‘Modest’ Putin makes low-key announcement of 2024 presidential run

But the 26-year-old member of the group said the efforts to stop them only made them more defiant.

“Right now, nothing will stop us. Nothing can stop the women who have united because they have nothing to lose. Their men are facing such conditions that the women are not afraid of anything.”

For the single mother whose son is at war, protest, once unthinkable, now seems a last desperate hope to save him. “I have not participated in rallies, street protests, but I think very soon I will agree to do so.”

“I feel deceived,” she continued. “I realize that in any conflict all sides are to blame, but I have one question: When will those who are responsible for stopping this hell sit down at the negotiating table?”

2016: Winner of the Overseas Press Club Madeline Dane Ross Award for international reporting on the human condition

2016: Reporting fellow, International Women’s Media Foundation  

2016: Anchored the Los Angeles Times story, "Diary of Terror," that was awarded an Associated Press Media Editors award in the Sally Jacobsen International Perspective category, as well as a citation for storytelling from the APME

2009: Winner of the Daniel Pearl Award for courage and integrity in reporting

2009: Awarded the Batten Medal by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, recognizing “compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog"

2008: Citation by the Overseas Press Club in relation to the Joe and Laurie Dine award for international reporting dealing with human rights

2008: Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy award for international reporting on human rights, social justice or the power of individual action

2007: Winner of the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award for international reporting.

Presbyterian Ladies' College, Burwood, Australia

Robyn Dixon is a foreign correspondent on her third stint in Russia, after almost a decade reporting there beginning in the early 1990s. In November 2019 she joined The Washington Post as Moscow bureau chief. 

Robyn Dixon

Natalia Abbakumova is a researcher for The Washington Post's Moscow Bureau.

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Russia military mothers and wives rare sour note in Putin reelection

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