**They may not be questioning the “special operation,” but videos in which family members point out the Russian army’s lack of organization have embarrassed authorities, writes Le Monde’s Russia correspondent Benoît Vitkine.**
Video after video, the same scene unfolds: women with grave faces stand close together, the young with the old, sometimes in a village square or outside an administrative building, or the stubbornly closed doors of a military base. The words are also the same: “Our sons and husbands are not cannon fodder. They need help.”
On November 5, the women of Voronezh, a city in western Russia, were the first to speak out like this. “We are addressing the governor and higher authorities, we ask you to help our conscripted men. They were taken to the front line and abandoned by their command before being subjected to a three-day bombardment. Our soldiers survived as best they could. They had nothing to eat or drink, but they didn’t run away. They don’t know what to do.”
Their account confirmed information transmitted by the men themselves, who have described a massacre on the outskirts of Svatove, in the Luhansk Oblast.
Two days later, the women of a neighboring town whose husbands and sons were fighting in the same place agreed. “We, the mothers and wives of the Pavlovsky district, join the women of Voronezh and demand that the laws of the Russian Federation be respected.” At issue is the promise that had been made by authorities not to send conscripted troops to the front line without significant preparation. One of the women added: “They got out by crawling among the corpses. Out of 500 men, there are very few left alive.”
On November 8, the women of the Kursk region added their voices – around 50 published videos or tried to contact the governor. When they did not receive a reply, they headed for a military base on the Ukrainian border and camped for three days in a parking lot, where they were joined by women from Belgorod. This group reported that 30 people had survived out of a group of 200 who had been conscripted and sent to the battlefield.
During this time, videos were also coming in from Tula, Bryansk, Vladimir and Vologda. All of them were asking for husbands, sons and brothers to be withdrawn from the front, and, in some cases, for the promised bonuses to be paid. Even in Donetsk, in the Donbas, mothers have demanded (successfully) that conscripted students be sent back to their families – in one case, the student in question was still in high school.
“Videos are appearing in which family members point out the Russian army’s lack of organization, embarrassed authorities.
Women stand close together in a village square or outside an administrative building, or the stubbornly closed doors of a military base.
Their words: “Our sons and husbands are not cannon fodder. They need help.”
And once again the Kremlin proves they do not give a single fuck about butchering their own people.
As far as I know the mothers of russian solders are very well respected in russian society. So that’s not good optics at all for Putin. But my guess is nothing will change unless he starts sending people from Moscow to the front.
They are already dead just accept and make new babies for motherland ruZZia
They are asking for more supplies and armor, not to stop the war
They couldn’t care less about Ukraine though. Where were their protests when the war started?
6 comments
**They may not be questioning the “special operation,” but videos in which family members point out the Russian army’s lack of organization have embarrassed authorities, writes Le Monde’s Russia correspondent Benoît Vitkine.**
Video after video, the same scene unfolds: women with grave faces stand close together, the young with the old, sometimes in a village square or outside an administrative building, or the stubbornly closed doors of a military base. The words are also the same: “Our sons and husbands are not cannon fodder. They need help.”
On November 5, the women of Voronezh, a city in western Russia, were the first to speak out like this. “We are addressing the governor and higher authorities, we ask you to help our conscripted men. They were taken to the front line and abandoned by their command before being subjected to a three-day bombardment. Our soldiers survived as best they could. They had nothing to eat or drink, but they didn’t run away. They don’t know what to do.”
Their account confirmed information transmitted by the men themselves, who have described a massacre on the outskirts of Svatove, in the Luhansk Oblast.
Two days later, the women of a neighboring town whose husbands and sons were fighting in the same place agreed. “We, the mothers and wives of the Pavlovsky district, join the women of Voronezh and demand that the laws of the Russian Federation be respected.” At issue is the promise that had been made by authorities not to send conscripted troops to the front line without significant preparation. One of the women added: “They got out by crawling among the corpses. Out of 500 men, there are very few left alive.”
On November 8, the women of the Kursk region added their voices – around 50 published videos or tried to contact the governor. When they did not receive a reply, they headed for a military base on the Ukrainian border and camped for three days in a parking lot, where they were joined by women from Belgorod. This group reported that 30 people had survived out of a group of 200 who had been conscripted and sent to the battlefield.
During this time, videos were also coming in from Tula, Bryansk, Vladimir and Vologda. All of them were asking for husbands, sons and brothers to be withdrawn from the front, and, in some cases, for the promised bonuses to be paid. Even in Donetsk, in the Donbas, mothers have demanded (successfully) that conscripted students be sent back to their families – in one case, the student in question was still in high school.
**Read the article here:** [**https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/16/wives-and-mothers-of-conscripted-russian-soldiers-demand-their-return-from-the-front_6004534_4.html**](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/11/16/wives-and-mothers-of-conscripted-russian-soldiers-demand-their-return-from-the-front_6004534_4.html)
“Videos are appearing in which family members point out the Russian army’s lack of organization, embarrassed authorities.
Women stand close together in a village square or outside an administrative building, or the stubbornly closed doors of a military base.
Their words: “Our sons and husbands are not cannon fodder. They need help.”
And once again the Kremlin proves they do not give a single fuck about butchering their own people.
As far as I know the mothers of russian solders are very well respected in russian society. So that’s not good optics at all for Putin. But my guess is nothing will change unless he starts sending people from Moscow to the front.
They are already dead just accept and make new babies for motherland ruZZia
They are asking for more supplies and armor, not to stop the war
They couldn’t care less about Ukraine though. Where were their protests when the war started?