‘I lived in hope of ringing in the New Year with my husband’

Moscow, 7 November. It’s cloudy and wet. Hundreds of Communist Party supporters have gathered at the Karl Marx monument outside the city’s world famous Bolshoy Theatre, red flags with the party symbols fluttering above their heads. Top party officials, including veteran party leader Gennady Zyuganov, are preparing to address the crowd. Just behind them is a group of women holding placards calling for conscripts to come home, effectively hijacking the event in an exceedingly rare example of genuine political protest in Russia. They are quickly surrounded by police officers who study their documents and their signs carefully.

Pictures from the protest subsequently appeared on Telegram channel The Way Home. Its administrators say they are campaigning for conscripts to be returned home. The channel has almost 14,000 subscribers and contains links to dozens of other chats, where soldiers’ relatives share the measures they are taking to bring their loved ones home.

Nadezhda, not her real name, explained her reasons for protesting. “The Ministry of Defence had said the priority for 2023 was to recruit 522,000 people into the army, so at the end of last year, we thought our men would be given leave at the New Year, and we calmed down. Then, in early September, [Head of the State Duma’s Defence Committee Andrey] Kartapolov began making contradictory statements that they would be there until the end of the special military operation. First he said there’d be no rotation, then that there would.”

“I lived in hope of ringing in the New Year with my husband, but look where Kartapolov has landed us.”

“But now they want our men to sign contracts! Putin should announce that the Defence Ministry is starting the planned replacement of conscripts, and everyone should be home by the end of the year.”

‘Some people laugh that our husbands signed up’

The Way Home Telegram channel writes that all major state media completely ignores appeals by conscripts’ relatives, while propagandists accuse them of working either for the Ukrainian special services or Russia’s domestic opposition.

Nadezhda stresses that while she’s prepared to talk to any media outlet just to make herself heard, not everyone else feels the same. For many, even giving an interview anonymously is a no-no. All editorially independent media outlets are out of bounds, especially ones that have been branded “foreign agents” by the Russian government. Warnings circulate in the chats about surveillance and most users are certain that their activities are being closely observed by the authorities both in Russia and Ukraine, as well as by Ukraine’s CIPSO, whose job is to sow discord and chaos inside Russia.

The pro-war Telegram channel Readovka, which maintains that real conscripts’ wives don’t plan rallies, actively criticises the women and any channels that cover their activities. Other pro-Kremlin sources aren’t far behind: leading TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov recently reposted a message, in which the author refers to The Way Home as the work of foreign secret services.

“The most interesting rumour is that [jailed opposition leader Alexey] Navalny is in charge of us! I already feel like I’m the only normal person in a crazy hall of mirrors,” says Nadezhda.

“Some people laugh that our husbands signed up, others say we’re from the Ukrainian CIPSO, but most ordinary people couldn’t care less. They just want to be left alone,” complains another member of the movement who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘Nobody will engage before March’

Judging by the number of chats and the range of positions expressed in them, The Way Home is far from being a cohesive political movement, and exhibits no signs of structure or hierarchy. While The Way Home has published a manifesto that calls for demobilisation, it remains a broad church, single-issue movement and doesn’t discuss military or political issues.

“We don’t impose our political opinion or view on the armed conflict in Ukraine. Everyone has the right to decide for themselves. However, we will support whoever brings us our husbands back. Servicemen and their families — unite and fight for your rights. Subscribe to this channel, join regional chats, create your own — together we are strong!” their manifesto reads.

Putin signed the decree ordering a “partial” mobilisation on 21 September last year. According to official data, 318,000 reservists were subsequently drafted into the Russian military in total. But according to independent estimates, that figure is at least half a million. Every Russian now knows somebody who has been conscripted.

All those conscripts remain at the front over a year later, with the exception of the large numbers who have been killed or seriously injured. The main effect of Putin’s mobilisation is that these very soldiers have turned out to be the most disenfranchised in the Russian army. Only those forced to sign up to militias in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics have it worse, but who remembers them now?

Judge for yourselves. Units controlled by Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov are mainly engaged in online combat. Former prisoners sign up to fight for six months and then receive a pardon. Many career soldiers hurriedly resigned at the beginning of the war while they still had the chance. And even those serving in the most odious volunteer units are free to quit the front at will.

They have complained of a lack of everything — from socks to shells — from day one, with conscripts and their concerned relatives between them posting hundreds of videos in which they recount incidents of heavy losses, poor supplies and rights violations.

Immediately prior to the mobilisation decree, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, significantly increased sentences for desertion, looting, the destruction of weapons, surrender and failure to appear for service. It didn’t prevent soldiers from leaving their bases, however. According to Mediazona, in the first six months of this year alone, more than 2,000 criminal cases were opened against soldiers going AWOL, twice as many as last year.

The defendants in such cases tend to be conscripts. Almost half — 45% — have been handed custodial sentences, the rest were given suspended sentences, which meant they could be sent back to the front. As has so often happened in Russia in the past, women have been left with no option other than to stand up for their husbands and sons.

Initially, volunteer initiatives began collecting whatever these soldiers needed when it became clear they were being expected to fight “NATO proxies” with their bare hands. Then there were the angry appeals to camera by wives and mothers, saying their husbands and sons had become cannon fodder and posing increasingly uncomfortable questions to the government.

Moscow City Duma Deputy Yevgeny Stupin, who was expelled from the Communist Party for criticising the Kremlin and declared a “foreign agent”, has repeatedly heard appeals from soldiers’ relatives.

“The reason this has all started now is that people are tired of waiting. It’s been a year. They thought their relatives would be home by now. So people have decided to take action. We can see that nobody is interested in engaging with them now. Nobody will be before March. The Kremlin sees it as very dangerous to let people leave now: the front could collapse. And right before the elections. The relatives of these conscripts are now acting quite appropriately.”

“This protest is in its infancy, and the authorities are trying to smother it. It doesn’t feel like it’s about to break through to the mainstream yet, but one day it will: if a lot more people get involved or the authorities go too far.”