Since the beginning of November, spontaneous pickets and rallies have been taking place in many Russian cities and regions (Moscow, St. Petersburg, various cities of the Urals and Siberia) demanding the return home of those drafted as a result of Putin’s “partial mobilization” last fall. Most of those mobilized signed annual contracts, but now the authorities, represented by the head of the State Duma Defense Committee, General Andrei Kartapolov, say that no demobilization is planned until the end of the “special military operation. ” But no one knows when and how it will end…
The actual indefiniteness of this mobilization outraged relatives, mainly the wives of those mobilized, and they began to take to the streets. In response, the Kremlin set the governors the task
stop the protest at any cost. Persuade, promise, pay. Anything, as long as it doesn’t go out onto the street, in any quantity, even 50 people.
They are trying to ban street rallies under far-fetched pretexts – for example, “the danger of a pandemic,” while pro-government official events are held freely. The authorities still do not dare to forcefully disperse women’s rallies, fearing that this could lead to aggravation of the protest. This is a very clear indicator that the Russian repressive machine is beginning to malfunction.
Presidential elections are due to take place in Russia in March 2024, and therefore the authorities are afraid of using harsh measures to undermine social stability. In addition, the military and their relatives are traditionally considered Putin’s “base electorate.” Therefore, in addition to the usual steps, when officials simply prohibit protest actions, sometimes they still enter into dialogue with protesters. For example, in Novosibirsk the authorities held a closed meeting with relatives of those mobilized – but without giving them any specific promises and without allowing independent journalists to attend. Similarly, in St. Petersburg , United Russia deputies sometimes meet with those who demand the return of those mobilized, but only collect their requests not promising any solutions. Probably, the authorities are trying to “let off steam” in this way and show that they still know how to hear citizens. The lack of direct answers means that the protests will inevitably continue.
The New York Times, publishing a detailed overview of protests in various regions, recalls: that in the 1990s, the anti-war movement, united around soldiers’ mothers, became an important factor in prompting the Kremlin to end the first Chechen war. Today, the authorities are trying in every possible way to prevent the current protests from developing into such a nationwide movement.
Last spring, with the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine, mass anti-war protests immediately began, sweeping more than 200 Russian cities. But then the authorities managed to suppress them by sharply tightening legislation. Just for the poster “No to war!” Large fines began to be awarded and under the newest criminal article about “discrediting the Russian army” you can get a sentence of 7 years in prison, as happened with the St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko.
Against the mobilization that Putin announced in September 2022, quite massive protests also took place in various Russian regions, for example, in Yakutia and Dagestan – up to the blocking of highways and clashes with the police. But then this did not help to stop the mobilization process, because the Russian authorities offered the mobilized a large allowance – at least 195,000 rubles (about € 2,000) per month. In most Russian regions, apart from the capital cities, such high salaries simply do not exist. Especially in the national republics, which exist in the status of raw material colonies of Moscow, and this largely explains the disproportionately large percentage of those mobilized there.
Moreover, for the death of the conscript, the authorities took it upon themselves to pay his family 12 million rubles (more than € 120,000). By Russian standards, especially regional ones, this is a fortune, an amount that cannot be earned in a lifetime. Therefore, when Russian families last year coldly sent their husbands and sons to war in Ukraine, it gave the impression of a moral catastrophe – they literally sold their lives to the state and bought, for example, cars with “death money”. This clearly showed what Putin’s loud propaganda of “traditional family values” really costs.
But life still took its toll. On November 12, the “Way Home” telegram channel published a manifesto of the relatives of the mobilized, which marks a decisive break with official militarism. Of course, they do not directly call for an end to the war – such words today would entail their immediate arrest. However, some of the wording of this document sounds unprecedented and even revolutionary: the authors demand “complete demobilization” of civilians and are ready to support any political force that “will return our men to us.”
On November 27, they published a new appeal to fellow citizens – with sharp criticism of Putin himself, which by Russian standards looks very unusual. In official media, it is customary to liken the image of the president to an all-powerful and irreplaceable king and endow him with almost sacred attributes. If ordinary citizens doubt his actions, this begins to look quite dangerous for the stability of this entire neo-imperial system. However, this system itself seems to be reaching a dead end because it is trying to solve two opposing problems: on the one hand, to gently stop the protests, and on the other, to prevent the demobilization of those drafted last year.
Experts name several reasons why the Russian government refuses to rotate mobilized military personnel. Firstly, there is simply no one else to replace them with – the 300 thousand people mobilized last year have exhausted the number of middle-aged men who want to fight and are fit for this for health reasons. But many more – 700 thousand people, on the contrary, chose to avoid going to war and went abroad, mainly to post-Soviet countries where Russians do not need a visa (Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc.). Therefore, the authorities fear that if a new wave of mobilization is announced, emigration will again increase sharply, which will undermine both Russia’s demographic and intellectual potential – since it is the most educated people of modern professions who are fleeing from Kremlin militarism. In Russia, a law was recently passed to raise the conscription age to 30 years, but it is unlikely to help, and even vice versa – if young conscripts, rather than contract soldiers, are sent to war, this is fraught with an increase in social protests.
Estonian analyst Rainer Sachs believes that one of the most important reasons why the Russian authorities are afraid to let those mobilized go home is that they can reveal to the public real information about army losses, which the Kremlin censorship carefully hides. Independent journalists have identified the names of more than 30 thousand Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine, mostly mobilized ones. Moreover, they admit that the real number of losses is much higher since the calculation is carried out only according to data that can be documented. Even if we take this figure as a basis, it already looks amazing – it turns out that in less than two years of the war against Ukraine, Russia lost twice as many of its military personnel as the entire USSR did during the 10-year invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989). There, according to official data, about 15 thousand Soviet army personnel died. It turns out that Putin’s Russia values the lives of its military much less than Brezhnev’s USSR.
Another reason why the Russian government is in no hurry to demobilize is also related to memories of the Afghan war. Those who served there often brought home the “Afghan Syndrome” – a stressful condition typical of former military personnel who cannot fit into civilian life and transfer violent methods of solving life’s problems to their cities. The authorities are obviously afraid of a sharp increase in crime, but at the same time, they provoke it themselves, since last year they have massively mobilized even prisoners, promising them an amnesty.
However, current Russian protests sometimes evoke parallels with an earlier era. For example, in August 1914, the majority of Russians supported the country’s entry into the First World War, and many willingly went to the front on the tsar’s orders. But gradually the goals of this war became increasingly unclear, massive losses seemed in vain, and mobilization, just like today, turned out to be indefinite. In February 1917, the same Russians took to the streets with the slogan “Down with autocracy!” We may see this story repeat itself.
Vadim Shtepa
Регион-Эксперт
