Families say Russian conscripts thrown to front line unprepared

Irina Sokolova’s husband, a Russian soldier mobilized to fight in Ukraine, called her from a forest there last month, sobbing, almost broken.

“They are lying on television,” he wept, referring to the state television propagandists who play down Russian failures and portray a do-or-die war for Russia’s survival against the United States and its allies.

Sokolova, 37, cried for him too, and for their nearly year-old baby son, she said in a telephone interview from her home in Voronezh, in western Russia.

Sokolova is among dozens of soldier’s spouses and other relatives who are voicing remarkably public - and risky - anger and fear over the terrible conditions that new conscripts have faced on the front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The soldiers’ relatives, mostly people who would normally stay out of politics, are tempting the wrath of the Kremlin by posting videos online and in Russian independent media, and even speaking to foreign journalists.

They say that mobilized soldiers were deployed into battle with little training, poor equipment and often no clear orders.