{"id":16018,"date":"2024-03-09T11:31:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T11:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=16018"},"modified":"2024-04-09T08:19:01","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T08:19:01","slug":"russian-army-wives-speak-out-against-putins-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/russian-army-wives-speak-out-against-putins-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian army wives speak out against Putin’s war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

International Women\u2019s Day is widely celebrated in Russia. But amid the bouquets of flowers and stilted speeches of congratulation\u00a0made by Vladimir Putin<\/a>, the state-controlled media will be doing its best to ignore one group of Russia\u2019s women. <\/strong><\/p>\n

These are the wives of some of its soldiers fighting in Ukraine, who have embarked on\u00a0a series of regular, public demonstrations<\/a>\u00a0that challenge the state and its narratives of societal unity around the war.<\/p>\n

When Russia began its mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,\u00a0it was widely expected<\/a>\u00a0that soldiers\u2019 mothers would participate in public protests against the war and demand the return of their sons, as they did in Russia\u2019s war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. But these mothers have\u00a0all but disappeared from view<\/a>\u00a0under increasingly harsh crackdowns on\u00a0opposition to the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, it is soldiers\u2019 wives who have have emerged as one of the few sources of open criticism of the state\u2019s handling of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The prominence of wives rather than mothers of soldiers reflects the fact the war is not being fought by conscripts in their late teens and early twenties. Instead, many of the soldiers are married men in their 30s, 40s and even 50s. These men were mobilised, as reservists, on\u00a0Putin\u2019s order in September 2022<\/a>, and are serving open-ended deployments to Ukraine. These are men who previously served in the army as conscripts, aged up to about 60.<\/p>\n

These mobilised soldiers, along with those recruited from prisons, are regarded as expendable by their military commanders. They are sent into the most dangerous combat missions, and are more likely to be injured and killed than professional soldiers, according to a\u00a0BBC-Mediazona project<\/a>\u00a0that is attempting to track Russian casualties.<\/p>\n

Our ongoing research suggests the main strategy that women in Russia\u2019s military families have adopted in dealing with the state is \u201cpatriotic dissent\u201d. Avoiding direct criticism of the war, they emphasise they are the loyal wives of men who are doing their duty for their country. They focus on trying to gain specific concessions from the state, such as periods of leave for their husbands or more extensive welfare support for military families. They also use social media, and especially Telegram, to share information including strategies for lobbying Russia\u2019s ministry of defence.<\/p>\n

Telegram to the Kremlin<\/h2>\n

But among the many Telegram channels set up by wives of mobilised soldiers, one called The Way Home has become the focus of more confrontational forms of protest. Angered by\u00a0the announcement in autumn 2023<\/a>\u00a0that mobilised soldiers would be deployed to Ukraine indefinitely, the women behind the channel decided to go beyond pleading with the state.<\/p>\n

In November 2023, The Way Home wives issued\u00a0a manifesto<\/a>\u00a0calling for an end to the mobilisation of civilians to fight in the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d. They also started taking their complaints beyond social media.<\/p>\n

Some actions are relatively modest, such as\u00a0putting stickers on cars<\/a>\u00a0calling for the return of their husbands. Others are much more difficult for the state to ignore.<\/p>\n

Since January, small groups have gathered every Saturday to\u00a0lay flowers at eternal flames<\/a>\u00a0around Russia, including at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in Moscow. Wearing white headscarves and holding signs calling for an end to mobilisation, the wives have also urged widows of soldiers who have been killed in the war to join them.<\/p>\n

So far, the state has ignored these demands for an end to mobilisation, and is attempting to placate the wives by expanding benefits for military families \u2013 including changing the rules to permit payments to be made to the unmarried partners of soldiers; a blatant contradiction of Putin\u2019s emphasis on marriage and\u00a0traditional family values<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Protests are broken up but when the wives are detained,\u00a0they are released with a warning<\/a>. However, the women are clearly coming under pressure. Some have reported police visiting their homes to warn them against protesting. They have been verbally attacked by Russian\u00a0media personality Vladimir Solovyov<\/a>, and Telegram has inserted a \u201cfake\u201d label on\u00a0The Way Home channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although The Way Home wives have demonstrated they are capable of holding public demonstrations that are critical of the state\u2019s handling of the war,\u00a0Russia\u2019s political opposition<\/a>\u00a0has so far dismissed their potential to become a political force. Instead, the wives are described as naive for failing to oppose the war itself, and complicit because they accept \u2013 and seek \u2013 money from the state in the form of welfare benefits.<\/p>\n

Long history of activism<\/h2>\n

This dismissive attitude towards the activism of women in military families has a long history in Russia.\u00a0In 1917, women<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 known as\u00a0soldatki<\/em>\u00a0(soldiers\u2019 wives and other female family members) \u2013 played an important role in the social unrest that overturned the monarchy and paved the way for the Bolshevik revolution.<\/p>\n

But the soldatki<\/em> were patronised by both Tsarist and Soviet political leaders. Described as ignorant because they couched their demands in terms of the welfare of their families rather than in the language of political ideology, they have also been left out of most historical accounts of the revolutions in 1917.<\/p>\n

It is important to maintain a sense of perspective about these protests. The Way Home wives represent a small subsection of the hundreds of thousands of wives and mothers of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. They express strongly nationalistic views \u2013 their manifesto\u00a0explicitly distances them from \u201cmigrants\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and other non-Russian soldiers deployed to fight in Ukraine, as well as from prisoners. They have not voiced sorrow or regret for the thousands of Ukrainians killed and injured by Russia\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n

But it would also be a mistake to overlook the significance and the political nature of these soldiers\u2019 wives\u2019 actions. By calling for an end to mobilisation, The Way Home wives are challenging Putin\u2019s strategy of waging \u201cforever war\u201d until Moscow achieves its aims.<\/p>\n

These women are also exercising the fundamental right of citizens to hold their government accountable for its policies \u2013 there is no more political act than this. Ultimately, women\u2019s \u201cpatriotic dissent\u201d is a powerful form of resistance and it must be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

First published by The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n

Featured image of Feminist Anti-war Resistance on IWD 2022 via Peace Pledge Union<\/a><\/p>\n

See also: Politico<\/a>, Meet the Russian women taking on Putin<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“These women are also exercising the fundamental right of citizens to hold their government accountable for its policies \u2013 there is no more political act than this. Ultimately, women\u2019s \u201cpatriotic dissent\u201d is a powerful form of resistance and it must be taken seriously.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":16021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[421],"tags":[631],"class_list":["post-16018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}