Rage of dead soldiers’ wives and mothers puts lie to propaganda

VLADIMIR PUTIN may insist that his invasion of Ukraine is going to plan but thousands of Russian women disagree – the grieving mothers, sisters and widows of dead Russian soldiers.

“This is not our war; this is the authorities’ war,” Anastasia Banschikova told The Sunday Telegraph over the phone from Orenburg in central Russia. where she lives with her three-year-old daughter. “Our boys there do not want this war,” she said. “They thought they were going on regular exercises but ended up in a meat grinder.”

Mrs Banschikova decided to speak out after she was told in a gruff phone call by a Russian army officer that her 21-year-old husband, Viktor, had been killed while fighting in Ukraine.

And Mrs Banschikova is not alone. Despite the Kremlin propaganda, which has tried to block out evidence of high casualties, across Russia there are growing signs that thousands of wives and mothers share her fear and anger.

In an intercepted telephone conversation released by Ukrainian intelligence this week, a Russian mother begged her soldier son to lay down his rifle and come home.

“Vova, no. Yulia also said that she was fine but yesterday they came and told her that her husband had been killed. Kristina’s husband had also been killed,” the woman implored. “Our neighbour was also killed. There is no one left.”

According to the Kremlin’s last estimate, just under 1,400 soldiers have died since Putin ordered his forces to invade on Feb 24. Ukrainian estimates have put Russian dead at 10 times that, while the US has said that it is somewhere in between.

But for Putin the truth is far less important than the Kremlin’s version of reality. He has deployed both his propaganda machine to insist that the “special operation” is going to plan and his police force to crack down on dissent.

Criticism of the war can mean being arrested. Thousands of liberal-minded Russians have fled the country and the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign has brainwashed most of the rest of the population. Outpourings of support for the war are a common sight in Russia, with the “Z” symbol – a sign of support for the invasion – plastered across cities.

And yet, the Kremlin knows it has an Achilles heel. In the 1980s, it was the rage of the mothers of Soviet soldiers sent back from Afghanistan in bodybags that turned public support against the USSR’s war and led to a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.

Putin is all too aware of the danger that angry women could do to his war effort and is prepared to counter them, according to a Russian analyst based in Moscow, who declined to be named.

“Putin was around during the Afghan war; he has seen how powerful their voices are,” he said. “But, although they are important, they don’t have much of a voice at the moment. The clamour of the propaganda covers them up.”

Mrs Banschikova said her days are filled with caring for her child and supporting other new Russian widows. “My husband’s best friend died yesterday. His daughter was a month old yesterday too, but he never got to see her.”