Natalia Yermakova’s husband, Oleksandr, has been fighting in Ukraine for more than a year after responding to President Vladimir Putin’s call for volunteer mobilization. Wounded in the leg, he was operated on and then sent back into battle, Reuters reports in an article about the wives of Russian soldiers who went to the front because of their convictions. We are talking about women who believe in Putin’s speech and for whom “there are good reasons” for the war.

Family battalion

A firm believer in what Russia calls its “special military operation” against Ukraine, Natalia works as a volunteer in the “Family Battalion” in Moscow.

She is part of a group of about 40 relatives, mostly women, relatives of mobilized men who make camouflage nets, make signs to mark minefields, collect candles for storage and food kits.

As Putin seeks a fifth presidential term in March, seeing himself as the right man to lead a military campaign the West calls a colonial-style war of aggression, people like Yermakova appear to be the kind of Russians the president is targeting.

Her work takes place in the office of the ruling United Russia party, which is decorated with the Russian flag and portraits of politicians such as Putin.

According to her, there are several similar groups working in Moscow.

Relatives take turns taking the collected supplies – in a van that is more than 30 years old – to the Russian army in what Yermakova calls the “new territories” – Ukrainian land annexed by Russia.

“We really want to support them morally and emotionally and send them a message … that people here need what they are doing,” Yermakova told Reuters as she took a break from making huge camouflage nets.

Putin’s Russia, Russia “That’s how it should be”

Some wives of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are calling for their husbands, who they say don’t have enough breaks to spend time with their families, to demobilize and take their places, but that’s not the case for these women.

37-year-old Yermakova does not share this concern. She was able to spend some time with her husband after spending several months in Moscow recovering from leg surgery.

“If our government decided to act like that, then it should be like that,” Yermakova said.

“I think that Russia is waking up, waking up from its sleep and realizing that (the war) is not just happening for no reason and that there are good reasons for it.”

It’s a reference to the Kremlin’s narrative that the conflict is part of a larger existential struggle for a more just world order against what Putin says is a decadent West bent on controlling Russia.

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