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Olga Zukanova wants to protect her only son from being sent to the front in Ukraine. The 20-year-old Russian conscript would return to her in Samara on the Volga. After all, she was “an ordinary woman” and “an ordinary mother” who did not want her child shot.

To this end, she has joined forces with a number of other women across Russia to form the “Council of Mothers and Women”. Since September, they have been moving to the military units of their sons and husbands, writing letters of complaint to the ministries and demanding a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the same camp as the world conspirators

They denounce the abuses during the mobilization, demand warmer boots for their sons, modern weapons and better preparation. However, they do not doubt the “special military operation”, as the war in Ukraine is officially called in Russia.

Nor do they wonder under which umbrella they have registered their merger. The “People’s Union for the Rebirth of Russia”, of which the “Council” is now a part, is committed to restoring the Soviet Union, agitating against the “Jewish oligarchy”, speaking out against the 5G cell towers and the Covid vaccinations.

Most women who “don’t want the state to shut up,” as they say, are consciously and willingly treading the path of the world conspiracy. For many of them, Putin is a CIA agent who wants to destroy their country “in the name of the West” and surrender “the special Russian people” to the “greed” of this West.

Olga Zukanova, the spokeswoman for the Council, does not want to answer questions about this. She first agrees to a personal interview, then postpones it again, citing time constraints and, above all, the “Foreign Agents” law, which has been tightened since December 1.

This makes anyone who passes on knowledge and insights about the Russian military to outsiders a potential “agent” because he plays into the hands of the “enemy”. That’s why she only invites to the Council’s “press conferences”, which take place online every few days and are a kind of cry for help from women. The journalists cannot ask questions.

Desperate search for son’s body

Gradually, the mothers and wives speak up and tell their story. There is Zukanova herself, whose son only entered the army as a conscript in June, when Putin’s “special operation” had already been going on for months.

The oath followed in July and in August the son reported on the phone that he was urged to sign as a contract soldier. “We didn’t want to buy him out, everything has to be fair. The state has promised not to send conscripts to the front.”

There is also Zinaida Kurbatova from the Voronezh region, whose son volunteered immediately after the announcement of the mobilization and died just eight days later at the front in Ukraine. The mother received her child’s body first, and weeks later he received a letter from his military unit saying that the son, long dead by then, was preparing for battle.

Meanwhile, Irina Chistyakova from Petrozavodsk in Karelia reports how she has been doing everything she can for months to find her son Kirill. She herself had been in the combat zone several times, had seen a number of corpses, but had not found her “boy”. Now she believes her son is in Ukrainian captivity and no one has given her verified information.

Some women hold folders of letters in front of the camera and demand ‘justice’. However, their actions do not befit the state. The women organize themselves, of their own accord. However, there is hardly any demand for uncontrolled involvement in Russia. Zukanova and her comrades-in-arms are being prosecuted and their use is currently being monitored for “extremism”.

The West is responsible for the whole tragedy

The “Council of Women and Mothers” often repeats the official story that the Kremlin was “urged” by the West to launch the “special operation” in Ukraine. The ‘rebellious people’, as the mothers of the soldiers see themselves, are not rising up against Putin’s regime, nor against the war. It only criticizes how the mobilization is carried out. Only then do they realize how much is going wrong in a system they have barely questioned.

The repression is aimed at anyone who thinks differently, they say in surprise, the authorities just leave them alone, instead of answers, sanctions follow. The leadership keeps the people poor, the economy is faltering, the state has taken over the monopoly of information, and no one cares about people’s individual problems.

It’s like they woke up and realized what was happening around them. “How is that possible?” they shout into the camera, some crying – and have an answer that does not criticize Putin’s system, but denounces the United States, the West and the rich.

They recite anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and none of them back down. The Russian leaders see their sons and husbands as serfs who, according to them, blame not the Russian state, but the West, which dictates to the Russian state how to ruin the Russian people. Apparently, believing in the “Great Conspiracy” makes their desperation more bearable. (aargauerzeitung.ch)