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Ukraine war: Russian soldiers’ wives are increasingly outspoken in their opposition
By Jennifer Mathers, Aberystwyth University, Natasha Danilova, University of Aberdeen
International Women’s Day is widely celebrated in Russia. But amid the bouquets of flowers and stilted speeches of congratulation made by Vladimir Putin, the state-controlled media will be doing its best to ignore one group of Russia’s women. These are the wives of some of its soldiers fighting in Ukraine, who have embarked on a series of regular, public demonstrations that challenge the state and its narratives of societal unity around the war.
When Russia began its mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was widely expected that soldiers’ mothers would participate in public protests against the war and demand the return of their sons, as they did in Russia’s war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s. But these mothers have all but disappeared from view under increasingly harsh crackdowns on opposition to the war.
Instead, it is soldiers’ wives who have have emerged as one of the few sources of open criticism of the state’s handling of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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 Putin’s order in September 2022, and are serving open-ended deployments to Ukraine. These are men who previously served in the army as conscripts, aged up to about 60.
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 BBC-Mediazona project that is attempting to track Russian casualties.
Our ongoing research suggests the main strategy that women in Russia’s military families have adopted in dealing with the state is “patriotic dissent”.
Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-russian-soldiers-wives-are-increasingly-outspoken-in-their-opposition-224325