She cried, too, for him, said Sokolova, 37, and for their infant son, who is almost a year old. In a telephone interview from her home in Voronezh, western Russia.
Sokolova is among dozens of spouses and other relatives of soldiers who are publicly — and seriously — expressing their anger and fear at the horrible conditions the new recruits faced on the front lines of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Relatives of the soldiers, mostly people who usually stay out of politics, court the Kremlin’s wrath by posting videos online and in independent Russian media, and even speaking to foreign journalists. They say the mobilized soldiers were deployed into battle with little training, poor equipment and often without clear orders. Their families say many of them are exhausted and confused. Some got lost in the woods for days. Others refuse to fight.
“Of course he had no idea how terrifying it would be,” Sokolova told The Washington Post. “We watch our federal TV channels and they say everything is fine.”
The relatives usually do not criticize President Vladimir Putin or even the war, but their videos have exposed the low morale of many recruits, as Russia tries to overcome its recent losses by throwing an alleged 318,000 reinforcements into battle.
Yana, a transport worker from St. Petersburg, was a staunch supporter of the war until her partner was mobilized.
In a phone interview, Yana confirmed video accounts from other military couples that the men had to buy themselves warm uniforms and boots and had little training. In Ukraine, they were not given food or water.
“They don’t have any orders and they don’t have any assignments,” she said. “I spoke to my husband yesterday and he said they had no idea what to do. They had just been abandoned and had lost all faith, all faith in the authorities.”
In the videos, the wives recite lists of grievances in trembling voices. Recruits appear in flak jackets that barely cover their ribs or film themselves in Ukrainian forests, mentioning their dead and complaining that their officers are nowhere to be seen.
Details in the videos could not be independently verified but are consistent with accounts given by family members interviewed by The Post, and with reports by independent Russian media, such as AstraWhich open Seven basement prisons for fugitives in Luhansk.
Sokolova’s husband was mobilized to fight in the 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment on September 22. He told her he had no military training “and by September 26, he was already in Ukraine,” she said.
He called late last month, after narrowly escaping a major battle in which his unit was caught up and many killed. He and two others escaped without their backpacks and warm gear, but got lost and ended up wandering through the woods.
“They were thrown into the fire, so to speak, on the first front line, but they are not military men. They don’t know how to fight. They just can’t do it,” Sokolova said, adding that her husband was in severe pain due to pancreatitis. : “I feel how awful it is for him out there.” “My heart is breaking.”
Families of other men mustered to fight in the regiment said their loved ones were sent to the front line near Svatov, a small city in the Luhansk region, on their first day in Ukraine and given one shovel among 30 men to dig trenches. speaking in joint video The appeal was first sent to independent Russian media fiorstkaThey said the commanders “ran away,” leaving the men to face three days of heavy bombardment.
Dozens of soldiers mustered from the regiment marched 100 miles to Milov on the Russian border and demanded they return to their base near Voronezh, according to them. video The account is on November 3.
They were briefly taken to nearby Valuyki in Russia, but their request was ignored. “We wrote requests. We wrote reports. We did everything, but nobody listens to us. Nobody wants to hear us,” said a soldier, Konstantin Voropaev, in the video, in which he also asked for legal aid.
Sokolova’s husband called her in a panic the same day from Valuyki, saying he and others had been sent back into battle.
On October 28, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that the early problems with equipping and training soldiers had been resolved.
Military analyst Konrad Muzyka, of Poland-based Rochan Consulting, wrote in a recent analysis that despite the “bad morale” of recruits, their sheer size could help Russia on the battlefield.
As the videos go viral, the Russian authorities appear to be losing patience. The mobilized soldier, Alexander Leskhov, faces up to 15 years in prison after swearing in a video, shoving, and controlling the unit’s bulletproof vests, his lawyer, Henry Tiskarashvili, said.
“This is a sacrilege, an imitation of shooting, an imitation of exercises, an imitation of formation,” Leskhov exclaimed indignantly.
Yana and her husband, who have a 4-year-old child, were married with 43 other couples before the men were sent to war. The Washington Post agreed not to use her full name to protect her from arrest and prosecution.
In the couple’s apartment, the TV was always on, blaring the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is fighting the United States, not Ukraine. “We don’t know anything else,” Yana said. “We are used to believing what we are told.”
But after her husband was recruited, she gave up TV because it made her “aggressive.” She said she feared for her husband’s life but said she did not blame Putin “because he is a smart person”.
“We are totally confused, at a loss, and feeling so abandoned,” she said. “We cry from morning till night.”
Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Kremlin’s propaganda works — for now — with video protests not directed at Putin, or even war.
“Putin wants people to share responsibility for the war with him,” Kolesnikov said. He wants to sacrifice their bodies and lives on the altar of the struggle against NATO, the West and global evil. This strategy of glorifying cannon-fuel and the heroism of death is fraught with danger, in a fairly modern society that was not prepared to get physically involved in the trenches.”
After repeated military setbacks and great loss of life, support for the war wanes. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, reported on November 1 that 57 percent of Russians want peace talks, while 36 percent want to continue fighting.
Relatives of the men who have been mobilized, Sokolova said, “are aware of what is going on, but the people whose relatives are not mobilized see the world through rose-colored glasses. They have no idea what is going on, and they are not interested.”
Yana told her son that his father is a superhero who fights against evil. The fairy tale matches Russian imperialist propaganda, but deep down it doesn’t sound right. Yana said she was terrified that her husband would never phone again and that her son would grow up without a father.
She said, “I am just an ordinary woman and I want to live in peace.” “that’s all what I want.”
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