Russian women protest long soldier deployments
A growing effort puts pressure on Moscow officials
The woman in the video, her face blurred, gave a blunt assessment of Russian military policy: Soldiers mobilized over a year ago to fight in Ukraine deserved to come home. Why weren’t they?
“Our mobilized became the best army in the world, but that doesn’t mean that this army should stay there to the last man,” she said. “If he did something heroic, spilled blood for his country sincerely, then maybe it was time to return to his family, make way for someone else, but that’s not happening.”
The speaker was part of a grass-roots movement that has been gathering steam in Russia over the past several weeks. Women in various cities are seeking to stage public protests, challenging the official argument that mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely to secure their Russian homeland.
Hand-lettered posters behind the speaker in the video echoed that sentiment with slogans like “Do only the mobilized have a homeland?” A video of the speech, delivered at a rally in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on Nov. 19, was released online.
The nascent movement is a rare example of public displeasure with the war, the kind that the Kremlin has sought to suppress through draconian laws meant to stifle antiwar demonstrations. The women and the government officials have been involved in a delicate dance, with the protesters trying not to trigger those laws while the authorities seek to avoid hauling the relatives of active duty soldiers off to jail.
Authorities have so far stepped lightly, using intimidation and cajoling rather than detention or arrests. Permits to hold rallies in several major cities were denied, for example, and women in chat forums have complained about harassment.
Some said law enforcement officers visited them at home to inquire about their online activity and to warn them of the legal consequences of attending unauthorized rallies.
One main outlet for the protest movement has been a channel on the Telegram messaging app called “Put Domoy” in Russian, or “The Way Home,” which has attracted more than 14,650 participants since it was founded in September. The channel’s organizers published a manifesto pressing for mobilized soldiers to be sent home after a year in the combat zone. “Military servicemen and their families — unite and fight for your rights,” the manifesto said in part.
Authorities in Moscow and
Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, rejected recent requests for a rally permit, with officials citing a restriction on public assemblies that was created to combat COVID-19. In Moscow, about 20 demonstrators unfurled posters with slogans like “No To Indefinite Mobilization” at a Communist Party rally on Nov. 7. The police led them away but did not detain them.
Maria Andreeva, who helped organize the Moscow protest, said that the government had largely responded by offering more money and benefits to families of soldiers. “They agree to pay us even more, but only if we keep quiet,” she said in an interview. “Many women need their husbands and sons, not payments.”
Participants in protests across the country are fed up, Andreeva said. While crowing that more than 410,000 men have signed contracts to join the military this year, the government has brushed aside demands from the families to demobilize those drafted in 2022.
The rally in Novosibirsk, held by a different organization, was the result of a compromise between organizers and local authorities. Instead of a demonstration on the streets, local civilian and military officials gathered in a government auditorium. The press was largely banned, and participants had to prove that they had a relative serving in Ukraine.
Chelyabinsk, a major Russian city in the center of the country, held a similar meeting in its City Hall. The groups protesting take pains to stress that they are not unpatriotic and that they strive to respect the law. They say they are simply asking that the Kremlin introduce troop rotations.