Once influential, Russian soldiers’ mothers speak softly amid Ukraine war

In late March, Russia military authorities told Irina Chistyakova that her son, a conscripted soldier, had gone missing amid the war in Ukraine, and was probably dead. She refused to accept that.

Following the example of many brave soldiers’ mothers during Russia’s wars in Chechnya, she headed down to the battlefields determined to find him. And she did.

“I traveled 25,000 kilometers [15,500 miles], in Donbas, Mariupol, Crimea. I was bombed. I visited so many morgues. No one can understand what war is until you’ve seen it yourself,” she told Russian journalists Anton Rubin and Dasha Litvishko in interviews published on their YouTube channel, Razvorot (“Reversal”).

Like many others contacted by the Monitor for this story, Ms. Chistyakova was warned that foreign journalists will distort anything she says and does not want to be quoted directly by an American newspaper. But she has detailed her experiences to Razvorot, including a few scathing criticisms of Russia’s Defense Ministry. “I was doing the work of the Defense Ministry myself. It seems that I am the only person who needs my son. And I found out where he is. He is a prisoner of war in Ukraine.”

Of all the ways that citizens interface with their state, there is no relationship so fraught as war service, particularly when the troops have been conscripted. Most observers say Russia’s record in past wars of treating conscripts humanely and keeping families informed, especially of the worst news, has been abysmal. The impenetrable military bureaucracy and official indifference during the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan prompted the rise of the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, which organized women like Ms. Chistyakova into a social force that the Kremlin couldn’t ignore.

The chasm between military officials and soldiers’ families persists amid the war in Ukraine. But now there is some evidence that the Russian government has realized that it needs to improve its messaging – though it is unclear whether it intends to do so primarily by positive outreach, suppression of critical voices, or a combination thereof.

“Making mistakes and then correcting them”

After their establishment during the war in Afghanistan, Russia’s various Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers became some of the most powerful civil society organizations Russia has ever seen. Their anti-war stance, and the strong political influence they generated, arguably played a big role in ending both that war and the first Chechnya conflict on terms unfavorable to Moscow.

By the time of the second Chechnya war, in the early 2000s, the Russian state, now headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, proved far more adept at controlling the media, suppressing public protests, and also at winning the war.

The present conflict in Ukraine presents a far greater challenge, and the Kremlin has clearly given a lot of thought to ways of managing its potentially explosive relationship with the families of service members. Mr. Putin’s well-publicized meeting with a selected group of soldiers’ mothers on Nov. 25 was a televised attempt to get ahead of the issue, and it featured explicit promises from Mr. Putin that the mistakes of the past would not be repeated, families would be kept informed, injustices corrected, and in the event of injury or death, compensation provided.

“I want you to know that we share this pain with you,” he said. “And, of course, we will do our best, so that you do not feel forgotten, so that you feel the support.”

However, Ms. Chistyakova, whose social media posts had generated so much pressure for such a meeting, did not get an invite.

Though it’s hard to judge effectiveness, Russia’s Defense Ministry has established a hotline where families can inquire about a loved one serving in the war zone, and interested citizens can ask about the mobilization and other aspects of military service. Rules for how to claim the remains of a deceased soldier and obtain compensation have also been publicly spelled out.

A New Year’s Eve Ukrainian missile strike on barracks near Donetsk that killed scores of newly mobilized Russian troops provided a stark test of the system. It was quickly admitted by the Defense Ministry, which assured the public that all bereaved families have been informed and will be compensated. It also triggered a major debate in Russian social media over responsibility, which got considerable traction in the wider Russian media.

The public furor over the strike has since died down, but it remains unclear how well the system worked. For example, it appears that none of the three hotline numbers that had been publicized by the Defense Ministry is functioning, after several attempts to access them on Tuesday afternoon.

The RBK news agency cited Andrei Vdovin, the military commissar of Samara, a region on the Volga, as saying that no lists of casualties from the incident will be published “due to the risk of disclosure of personal data and the threat from ‘foreign intelligence’.”

“The government has been learning how to shape the public mood and blunt any impulses to protest,” says Masha Lipman, co-editor of the Russia Post, a journal of Russian affairs in English and Russian. “The Kremlin has always been good at patching and mending; making mistakes and then correcting them. There is a new program of social benefits that soldiers’ families are eligible for. Of course nothing can make up for the loss of a loved one, but compensation counts.”

She cites the recent controversy over Mr. Putin’s “partial mobilization” as an example of both the explosive potential of the conscription issue to generate discontent and the Kremlin’s ongoing ability to contain and redirect any protests.

“There was some public protest over mobilization, and many men left the country, but it faded away,” Ms. Lipman says. “It seemed like the protests were over the disorganization and incompetence of the mobilization rather than being against the war itself. The Kremlin also didn’t stop anyone who wanted to leave. That helped to let off steam, and all those men who left are less of a threat abroad than they would have been if they’d stayed in Russia.”

“They cannot close us with a screen”

The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers is still active, but far less publicly critical of authorities than in the past. One of its founders, Valentina Melnikova, agreed to talk about the group’s past, but not details of its present activities.

“We never get into military affairs. What matters to us are people,” she says. “When we meet with officials we present a concrete case based on facts and documents. We never invent things. Because of that, officials take us seriously.”

Ms. Melnikova was not invited to the meeting with Mr. Putin. “The story of Putin’s meeting with soldiers’ mothers and the choice of women who participated is yet another attempt to create a counterbalance to the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers,” she says. “They cannot close us with a screen. There are too many people who have problems with military service, while the state avoids direct contact or serious efforts to solve these problems.”

A number of smaller groups have appeared, such as the Council of Mothers and Wives, whose Telegram channel has become a clearinghouse for news about missing soldiers and criticism of the authorities. But its main organizer, Olga, was also deeply reticent to be named or quoted in an American newspaper.

That is different from the past, when activists saw publicity in Western media as a way of getting the attention of their own authorities. This undoubtedly reflects a growing social mood of fear about the consequences of criticizing the war, but, in at least some cases, there appears to be a genuine mistrust of the foreign journalist’s intentions.

Experts say the dominant public attitude, at least for now, is anxious but not explicitly anti-war.

“Soldiers’ parents from the provinces – and this is where the majority of the mobilized are from – may have a skeptical attitude toward the state, but they prefer not to protest,” says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. “They instead turn to particular officials to seek help. You can’t appeal to officials while protesting. And sometimes they do help. Not enough, perhaps, but such connections can still work.”