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At the end of October, her husband Irina Sokolova calls from a forest in Ukraine. “They lie on TV,” he tells her in a tearful voice, meaning the propagandists of Russian state television. There, Russian misadventures in Ukraine are downplayed and the war is legitimized with crude stories about a major Western threat to Russia from the United States and Europe.

Irina Sokolova lives with her one-year-old son in Voronezh, a large city in southwestern Russia, almost 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Her husband was drafted and sent to war.

Sokolowa, 37, recently gave a telephone interview to the American newspaper Washington Post. Their statements reveal the alternate reality that the Russian public is led to believe by state reporting. “Of course he had no idea how terrible it would be there,” Sokolova says of her husband. “We see our state television stations and they say everything is perfect.”

But little or nothing is perfect. This is evident from the numerous reports from Russian soldiers about the conditions in certain parts of the army that have now penetrated. There is always a lack of equipment, combat training, sometimes even food and water.

Sokolova’s husband was drafted into the army on September 22 as part of Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization, she told the Post. He told her that he had no military training, but that he was in Ukraine on September 26.

Then, at the end of October, the phone call described at the beginning. He recently survived a battle with great luck, many of his comrades were killed, Sokolova’s husband told his wife. The two of them made it to safety in a forest, but without backpacks and equipment.

“They were thrown into the fire, so to speak, in the very first front line, but they are not soldiers. They don’t know how to fight. You can’t do that,” says Sokolova. And she adds that her husband is in severe pain and has pancreatitis. “I feel how terrible it is for him there,” she says. “My heart is torn apart.”

Yana’s partner, a worker from St. Petersburg, also received marching orders, she says in another telephone interview with the Washington Post. Until now, she has been a clear supporter of the war in Ukraine. According to the newspaper, her full name is deliberately not mentioned.

Reality seems to have changed the opinion of the Muscovite. She also tells the American newspaper about her husband’s lack of equipment and training. Because supplies are scarce, he even gets too little food and drink. “They have no orders and no duties,” said the Russian. “I spoke to my husband yesterday and he said they don’t know what to do. They have just been abandoned and have lost all faith, all faith in the authorities.”

In an interview, the Russian explains that in the apartment where she usually lives with her husband and their four-year-old son, the television was on all the time and the Kremlin’s messages were announced. In particular, that Russia is fighting the United States and not Ukraine. “We don’t know anything else,” says Yana. And: “We are so used to believing what we are told.”

One of Solovyov’s most recent messages: he threatens Europe with military attacks.

After her husband was summoned, she gave away the television, saying he made her “aggressive,” says Yana. The Russian explains that she fears for her husband’s life. But: You don’t blame Vladimir Putin because he is “a smart person”.

Whether this is their actual opinion or whether it is a statement to avoid getting them into trouble remains to be seen. But it is clear that Yana also suffers: “We are completely confused, at our wits end and feel abandoned. We cry from morning to night.”

Her fellow sufferer Irina Sokolova concludes that only the relatives of soldiers who fought in the war know exactly what is really happening in Ukraine: