Anastasia Gorbacheva22:06, 26.11.23

The anti-war movement of soldiers’ wives and mothers may bring negative consequences to the Russian dictator before the elections.

The Kremlin fears that the wives of conscripts , dissatisfied with long terms of service, could become a serious political problem. In order to prevent a surge in women’s discontent, regional officials were instructed to issue monetary allowances to soldiers’ wives as quickly as possible.

Business Insider writes that the Kremlin believes that most wives are more concerned about getting money than getting their husbands back from the war. The news comes after military wives held a rare public protest in Moscow on November 7.

Women gathered on the city’s Theater Square with posters demanding that their husbands be transferred to another part of the army, the British Ministry of Defense said, but the police dispersed the action “within minutes.”

“It is clear that the indefinite stay of personnel in combat conditions without rotation is increasingly viewed as unacceptable both by the servicemen themselves and their relatives,” the British department said.

As The Times of London reports, citing the Russian publication The Insider, officials were also instructed to prevent the spread of protests at a three-day conference in the Moscow region. They were told the following: “Convince, promise, pay. Anything, as long as it doesn’t go out onto the street, in any quantity, even 50 people.”

Recent requests by military wives to hold protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg were rejected. The Kremlin appears to be increasingly concerned about popular discontent, especially with Russian presidential elections due in March 2024.

They are “inexplicably concerned,” says the latest report from the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, given the “apparent widespread approval” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the Levada Center, as of October 2023, 82% of Russians approved of Putin. Some analysts say the accuracy of these polls is unclear because many are wary of voicing their disagreement with Putin. However, he is not in serious danger when voting, since the opposition has long been suppressed and the media are under state control.

But in previous Russian conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the wives and mothers of conscripted soldiers have been influential in shaping public opinion, and analysts say Putin fears they could become the core of the anti-war movement.

“In a country where there is no independent media and other effective systems of state control, where the state pursues repressive policies against all types of civic activity, mothers and wives are the only legitimate critics of the military,” writes openDemocracy.

The war against Ukraine has put pressure on Putin, international sanctions have hit the economy and the partial mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists sparked protests last September.

This week, the chairman of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, Ella Pamfilova, made statements that Russians who left the country are trying to discredit the upcoming elections.

As ISW noted, her statements indicate that “the Russian government will continue to increase censorship under the guise of combating attempts at domestic election interference in the run-up to the presidential elections.”

War in Ukraine – wives of Russian soldiers are unhappy

On November 9, information appeared that the wives of mobilized Russians from the Ulyanovsk region complained that the command left their wounded husbands to die without food and water, surrounded by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The Russians were allegedly promised that they would be in the rear, but the mobs found themselves in the first line and immediately under fire from the Ukrainian military.

(C)UNIAN 2023