Photo: Telegram
The relatives of mobilised soldiers gathered outside the Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow on Saturday to demand that mobilised reservists serving in Ukraine be allowed to return home, according to Mobilisation News, a Telegram channel associated with the demobilisation movement, on Saturday.
About 20 mobilised soldiers’ wives and relatives demanded to meet with Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov on the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s announcement of “partial mobilisation” in September 2022. However, no Defence Ministry officials came out to speak with the protesters.
Instead, the protest was interrupted by “provocateurs”, according to Mobilisation News, who “insulted the wives and mothers” and accused them of being “foreign agents”.
According to another Telegram channel affiliated with the demobilisation movement, one of the provocateurs told the women that their husbands were “useless” and “at least they would do some good on the frontline”. Another said that “if everyone came out to protest”, there would be no one left to “defend the motherland”.
Another woman reportedly told one wife of a mobilised soldier that she should “stay home and pray”, while other provocateurs suggested that the protesters should enlist to fight in Ukraine themselves if they didn’t “like something”.
The women planned to camp out near the Defence Ministry overnight, but several of them were detained by the police at around 9pm, human rights group OVD-Info reported, adding that they had been released during the night after a “preventative talk”.
Two reporters working for independent news outlet SOTAvision were also detained while covering the protest on Saturday, according to OVD-Info, but were released after several hours in police custody.
“Belousov and his officials were spooked again,” a statement by Mobilisation News posted early on Sunday read. “First they wanted to make the women leave with the help of paid provocateurs, but it didn’t work. Then they had to bring in a bunch of policemen and shamefully detained the mobilised men’s relatives”.
“Now they’ve finally been released, but this shame cannot be erased from history. The authorities took the men away and are now at war with their wives, mothers and daughters,” Mobilisation News continued.
