Against a backdrop of snow-capped birch trees, a group of women wearing white headscarves blend into the Russian winter landscape. In a country where public dissent is rare, their blunt message to Vladimir Putin stands out: bring our men back from Ukraine.
“We want a total demobilisation. Civilians should not be engaged in the fighting,” says one of the women at the start of the nine-minute address this month. “There are many of us, and our numbers will only grow.”
The woman is Maria Andreeva, 34, and she is one of the unofficial leaders of a newly emerging grassroots movement that has been gaining momentum in Russia in the past few weeks.
They are the wives and mothers of some of the 300,000 Russian men who were conscripted in September 2022, at a critical period for the Kremlin when it needed to shore up its troop numbers after Ukraine recaptured swathes of territory in the south and north of the country.
More than a year later, with their loved ones still on the battlefield, many women are staging public protests and writing open letters taking to task the official narrative that mobilised troops are required in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Why should our men who led a peaceful life have to go to Ukraine?” Andreeva, who lives in Moscow, says. “If our government decided to attack a smaller country, let the army fight but leave our men alone.”
Andreeva says the movement emerged in September after Andrei Kartapolov, the chair of parliament’s defence committee, told the press there would be no rotation for troops in Ukraine and they would return home after the special military operation was completed.
Russia has a history of female-led protests during wartime. Wives and mothers led an anti-war movement during the first Chechen war in 1994 that helped turn public opinion against the conflict and played a role in the Kremlin’s decision to stop the fighting.
The women were organised in well-run groups such as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia (CSM), which had hundreds of regional hubs across the country, and, crucially, their message was aired on Russian television at a time when media was not fully subordinate to the state.
But since Putin took power in 1999, the Russian authorities have taken systematic steps to dismantle grassroots movements while also taking over independent outlets that could give them a platform.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin moved further, in effect criminalising all anti-war voices and handing out severe punishments to ordinary Russians for even small acts of civil protest against the invasion.
Andreeva communicates with other wives, sisters and mothers of soliders on Telegram, one of the last platforms that hosts independent voices. Most of their work is coordinated on the channel Put Domoy (The Way Home), which has amassed more than 35,000 members since it was founded in September. She says she is not afraid because she is fed up.
“The channel is where we come together and discuss our next moves,” says Natalia, a nurse from a small town near Saratov in southern Russia. “You realise that there are many more of you who want this war to end.”
Tackling the movement is a delicate matter for the Kremlin, says Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, based in Moscow. “These wives and mothers are not part of the traditional liberal and urban anti-Kremlin movement. Many of them come from Putin’s core base of support.”
Kolesnikov says the Kremlin may be worried that if it clamps down too hard on the group, it could provoke a larger response from the public.
So far, the authorities have opted against jailing or harassing the women, instead ordering state media to ignore their pleas, while also rejecting their requests for rally permits across the country.
In an attempt to address some of the brewing anger, Putin previously spoke to mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine in a carefully orchestrated meeting. A Guardian investigation showed that the women sitting with Putin were part of a handpicked cadre of mothers of soldiers with ties to the authorities.
Andreeva, who has dismissed Putin’s meeting as a “political show” says some of the louder voices in her group have been offered money in return for silence. “No amount of roubles can bring back your husband,” she says.
The Kremlin’s relatively mild response can partly be explained by how the women initially positioned themselves. At first, members of the Way Home group said they did not oppose the war and did not criticise Putin. “We are not interested in rocking the boat and destabilising the political situation,” the group’s manifesto read.
But as their demands have been ignored, their language has hardened. “We are being betrayed and destroyed by our own,” a recent letter by the group says.
In the same statement, the women question the Kremlin’s policy that frees convicted murderers and rapists from jail after six months of fighting in Ukraine. “Our president sure has a sense of humour,” the group says wryly.
And when Putin did not mention the possibility of a demobilisation during his televised year-end address, the women at Put Domoy wrote that he was acting “in his usual style: theatrically, mean and cowardly.”
Andreeva says within the movement there were a lot of different views on the fighting in Ukraine but as the authorities ignored their demands some changed their perceptions of the conflict.
“Some still buy into the state propaganda. But many are changing their opinion about the special military operation,” she says, adding that she would not vote for Putin in the presidential election next year.
Natalia says her husband’s treatment has led her to question the Kremlin’s official narrative on the war in Ukraine. “Putin first lied to us that civilians would never have to fight,” she says. “You start thinking: is he also lying about why we are in Ukraine?”
For Andreeva and other wives and mothers, the inequality of the burden of war was another complaint, with many saying they felt ignored, not only by the Kremlin but also by society at large.
Since the start of the conflict, Russians have largely embraced a form of escapism from it, with polls showing that most people preferred not to think about or follow the developments on the battlefield.
Kristina, from Vladivostok, says: “The country is preparing for the holidays. Everyone is out shopping for presents and eating caviar, while we live in hell, worrying about our husbands.”
The group’s plight exposes some of the difficult options faced by the Russian leadership as the war approaches its second anniversary.
A new mobilisation would allow a troop rotation that could bring many of the men home, but polls have consistently shown that a new mobilisation would be deeply unpopular – and could trigger a similar wave of anxiety and unrest seen last year when the call-up led to the biggest fall in Putin’s rating since he first came to power.
Kolesnikov says: “During the last mobilisation, the Kremlin broke the unwritten social contract with Russians: You allow us to fight in Ukraine, in exchange, we stay out of your private lives.”
Observers say it is too early to assess the impact of the movement of Russian women on a regime that has a long history of successfully quashing opposing voices.
But their anger underlines some of the unease some in the country feel about the conflict and puts a dent in the image portrayed by Putin of a society united behind the war effort.
Andreeva is determined to continue her protests, even if they could land her in jail. “We are tired of being good girls. It has got us nowhere.”
