NBC News spoke with a number of women who are part of a growing movement calling for their loved ones to be discharged from the military and allowed to return to civilian life.
In a rare challenge to the Kremlin, a growing number of Russian women are fighting to bring home their husbands, brothers and sons who were drafted to fight in Ukraine.
They say the men have served their time on the front lines, 15 months after some 300,000 reservists were called up to bolster Russia’s struggling campaign. But with little sign of President Vladimir Putin scaling back his ambitions, the military is ignoring their pleas and propagandists have sought to villainize those speaking out.
The women’s mounting frustration has bonded them together, providing common cause in their defiant public stand just months before Putin will extend his rule in an election.
Tragic womanhood is in this country’s DNA, from crying Yaroslavna to decemberist’s wives. Even if it’s not as pure as we could’ve wanted, it’s one of the last sacred things no one’s ready to touch. Even in prison context, waiting female relatives are saints. That’s maybe the last form of public protest that won’t land you in jail. I feel like that situation is watched closely, even from the frontline, especially from there. That’s a ticking bomb, and the more it goes, the harder it is to defuse. I’d probably be cautious of agents provocateers and moles in this informal movement, because derailing it into some other problem, like finding a ‘proof’ they are paid or pushing one such meeting over the fence into illegal zone are probably the most obvious ways to discredit them with as less blood as possible, and that happened many times in our history. I hope they’d be safe.