The Russian Orthodox Church remained faithful to the Julian calendar, which was corrected and replaced in the West by the Gregorian calendar in 1582. This explains why Russians celebrate Christmas in January.

Not because Russia has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for almost two years, and not because of the bombing of some border areas, these holidays will remain in the memory of Russians, but because of the frost, approximately minus 25 degrees, which damaged the heating network. So strong that in several localities the authorities have declared a state of emergency. Due to the damage, not only heat, but also gas and electricity were cut off. And this is a large energy state in Russia. Of course, this was not news for Moscow TV channels, which continued in their usual, propagandistic and optimistic note.

President Putin

In recent years, despite the fact that this is a religious holiday, the front pages of the press are occupied by Vladimir Putin. Televisions, all Russian mass media, lined up neatly, told how the head of the Kremlin spent Christmas at his residence in Novo-Ogaryevo, where he attended a service surrounded by the families of soldiers who died at the front in Ukraine. In his official Christmas speech, he recalled the “special military operation,” as Putin calls the full-scale war launched on February 24, 2022, against Ukraine. He also says that Christmas is a family holiday, that it should be celebrated as a family, that it is even more “family” than the New Year. One can hardly imagine a greater proof of cynicism than talking to these women and children who had just lost their husbands and fathers in a war of aggression that he himself had started. In fact, the Christmas message is an election message, since the presidential elections in Russia are scheduled for March 15-17. Putin is trying to quell the anger of these women by promising them attention, “support”, i.e. money. The head of the Kremlin calls on the authorities at all levels to take the side of those who suffered human losses so that they receive the “necessary help”. And ends the message with the words “we will always be there for you”. Television footage shows the president in a black suit, without a tie, surrounded by women, children, mostly young girls with white scarves on their heads, sitting, as usual, with his legs apart, as if he were a sailor. on the deck of the ship A little later, televisions show Putin in a chair, talking in the living room of his residence with family members of those killed at the front.

On the day when, a few tens of kilometers from Moscow, Putin met with widows and orphans of the war, near the Kremlin wall, near the monument to the Unknown Soldier, 15 women, all wearing white scarves on their heads, sewed on their clothes or held up posters demanding the return of their men from the front. A few kilometers further, in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense, another mobilized wife is protesting. These young women have been trying for months to find a less political form of protest to bring their husbands home, even for short vacations.

In September 2022, Putin signed a decree on partial mobilization. The number of those mobilized at the time is unknown, the figures provided by the authorities vary greatly. But one thing is clear. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers remain at the front without a break, without permission, without the prospect of returning home. And this despite the fact that criminals who were recruited from colonies and sent to the fronts in Ukraine were released after 6 months. These women have repeatedly filed this complaint and received no response from the authorities.

In August 2023, Desperate Wives launched the Way Home Telegram channel, which has garnered over 38,000 subscribers. On November 7, they tried to organize a demonstration, but the Moscow City Hall did not give them permission, citing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, he allowed a Communist Party rally. Only 30 women came to the communist rally with placards demanding that their husbands be returned home (“Give back the parents to the children!”). Within five minutes, the police brutally intervened and dispersed the action. Soldiers’ wives also tried to organize meetings in provincial cities, but only one, in Novosibirsk, was approved. Without the press, the police outnumbering the participants, the rally in Novosibirsk ended with a promise from the local authorities that the situation would be rectified. This is the kind of protest that is the hardest to deal with. Those women who today are dissatisfied with the fact that their husbands are not allowed home after 15 months, make up Putin’s traditional electorate. They constantly repeat that they are not involved in politics, they just want their husbands to be at home, close by. They do not give interviews, avoid any contact with the opposition media, both official and foreign, and do not discuss the war. These women are not calling for an end to war. I am not holding Putin accountable for initiating it, for hundreds of thousands of deaths. They want their men home, and this can only be achieved by a new mobilization. What Putin said in a December marathon interview, that this will not happen, because Russia has enough troops at the front. This is a pre-election message. Because analysts, although loyal to the Kremlin, deny him that, most likely, a large mobilization (also presented as “small” and “partial”) will take place in the spring, after the presidential “elections”. And that Putin is behaving the way he did in 2018 when it comes to mobilization, when he swore not to change the retirement age, and after the “elections” one of the government’s first measures was to raise the retirement age.

These leaderless, apolitical women, red-eyed from weeping for their husbands, have been identified by the Kremlin’s political advisers as their most dangerous enemy. Even the chief propagandist of the regime, Volodymyr Solovyov, attacked them, saying that “The Road Home” is a telegram channel “organized by foreign special services.” It was also a signal for the rest of the media to pounce on them. And for the FSB, which initiated preventive measures right at the front, asking soldiers in the trenches to write to their wives and urge them to leave this civil activism. In order to quell their resentment and avoid the collapse of protests, in addition to methods of intimidation, the authorities have developed tactics to buy time. I promise to take the women’s complaints “upstairs” in the hope that this will calm them down for a while.

Several Russian analysts compared the women demanding the return of their husbands to the protests of mothers in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina searching for their missing children during the military dictatorship (1976-1983), noting that the movement was one of the factors which they eventually led to the downfall of the junta. They were also apolitical housewives. They also had the same symbol — a white scarf on their heads. And the role of symbolism in politics should not be underestimated. Most likely, these women with white scarves on their heads will not overthrow the regime in Russia. In fact, I don’t even suggest it. But it can freeze him.

Patriarch Kirill

The owner of the Christmas holidays these days had no more peace than a resident of the Kremlin. The Patriarch expressed his political message in an interview with the Rossiya1 TV channel. From there, the press took a statement about the acceptance of those who return to Russia with repentance after fleeing due to the beginning of the war.

Cyril says that people who return home “with the knowledge that they really made a mistake” should not be rejected, comparing it to the parable of the prodigal son. Kirill is known for his pro-Putin position and justification of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It is not by chance that the head of the Russian Church is under the sanctions of several countries. The Patriarch’s call to welcome returnees may be part of a forceful strategy to persuade hundreds of thousands of Russians to return home (more than 800,000 left Russia between February 2022 and October 2023, according to the Financial Times), most of them educated young people who fear mobilisation. However, Moscow believers are concerned about the decision to ban priest Oleksiy Uminsky from the Holy Trinity Church in the center of Moscow, near the metro station “Kytai-misto”, from serving on Christmas Day and to replace him with a scandalous priest known as a radical supporter of the war against Ukraine. Uminsky was not a dissident, he never criticized the authorities, he is a 60-year-old man who built his career in the priestly order through conformism and loyalty.

Oleksiy Uminsky was removed (several years before his resignation!) demonstratively in order to strengthen conformism in the church, to exclude any, however small, deviation from the political line of the Kremlin. Perhaps precisely because most of the parishioners who attended his services recognized him, the public reaction on social media was stronger than on other occasions.

Bringing the “Trinity” icon, painted at the beginning of the 15th century by Andrei Rublev, to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, on Good Friday, at minus 25 degrees, contrary to the opinion of the entire expert… _ Continuation of the article on Contributors.ro