A group of mothers of Russian soldiers joined a group of feminist activists calling for the withdrawal of Moscow’s troops from Ukraine by launching an online petition on Sunday. This campaign, initiated by the Association of Anti-War Feminist Resistance, is timed to coincide with Mother’s Day in Russia, CNN reports.

The petition was published on Change.org and is addressed to members of the specialized commissions of the State Duma and the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the legislative power of Russia.

According to News.ro, by Sunday evening, the document had collected more than 1,500 signatures.

“The so-called special military operation, which brings destruction, suffering, blood and tears, has been going on for nine months,” the authors of the petition condemn.

“Everything that happens in Ukraine and Russia worries our souls. Regardless of nationality, religion and social status, we – mothers of Russia – are united in one desire: to live in peace and harmony, to raise our children under a peaceful sky and not to fear for their future,” the document says.

“In many regions, the families of the mobilized are forced to collect equipment for their relatives sent to death, to buy everything with their own funds, including bulletproof vests. Who will support families who have lost their guardians? We know the answer. All these difficulties will be an additional burden on the shoulders of mothers!”, the petition reads.

Mothers of conscripts and mobilized, the appeal says, “are obliged to humbly knock on the doors of city administrations” to try to bring their husbands home.

They arrange pickets, write collective appeals, submit petitions, but “no one hears” them.

“We are against the participation of our sons, brothers, husbands and fathers in this. Your duty is to protect the rights and freedoms of the mother and child. We should not turn a blind eye to all this,” the authors of the petition urge the parliamentarians

Mothers and wives of Russian soldiers mobilized for the war in Ukraine have been gathering across Russia for several weeks and demanding in video appeals broadcast on Russian-language Internet channels that President Vladimir Putin help their sons and husbands.

We remind you that state media in Russia broadcast recordings of Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with the mothers of Russian soldiers mobilized for the war in Ukraine in order to reassure women who have lost or are at risk of losing their children or spouses in the conflict started by Russia. Instead, “Ukrainian Pravda” reports that the women who attended the meeting with Putin are actually representatives of pro-government structures.

By the way, Olga Tsukanova, the mother of a young military man who came to Moscow precisely from the city of Samara, located 900 km to the east, with the hope that she would be accepted in the Kremlin, says that she was not accepted. received by Putin.

Putin will meet “from the arms of the mothers, who, as always, will ask appropriate questions and thank them.”

“I think they are afraid that they will be asked uncomfortable questions. But he has to solve the problem!”, she declares.

The Russian president knows how sensitive the topic of soldiers’ relatives is.

In Russia, “wives have the right” to hold the authorities accountable

Their status as mothers and wives of mobilized men who have gone to serve the country gives them legitimacy and some protection from persecution, since the authorities cannot see them as ordinary opponents.

In Russian society, “there is an instinctive feeling that wives have the right” to hold the authorities accountable, says Oleksiy Levinson, a sociologist at the independent Levada Center.

These women are “asking the state to fulfill its function as a ‘collective father’ of the mobilized,” he adds. “When the state or the military command does not fulfill its duties, women complain,” says the quoted expert.

At the moment, the movement is fragmented and poorly coordinated. The calls of grieving relatives are broadcast on social networks, where unofficial teams gather around more prominent personalities.

This also applies to Olga Tsukanova, who, in a video released by some Russian social networks, addresses Putin: “Vladimir Volodymyrovych, are you a man or something? Do you have the courage to look us in the eye? Not with custom-made wives and mothers, but with real women who came from different cities all the way here to meet you.”