MOSCOW: The videos of mothers and wives of soldiers mobilised to fight in Ukraine are flooding Russian social media, in which they are demanding that the military make good on promises made by President Vladimir Putin.

Anger and concern have built across Russia since September, when the Kremlin announced that hundreds of thousands of well-trained and well-equipped men would be conscripted and sent to the battlefield to bolster Moscow's struggling campaign in Ukraine.

But chaos ensued, with widespread reports of exempted men -- the elderly or infirm being dispatched to the front or conscripts dying after receiving nearly no training, forcing the Kremlin to concede "mistakes".

In a sign that Putin takes the growing malaise seriously, he is expected on Friday to meet a group of military mothers and wives for the first time since ordering Russian forces into Ukraine nine months ago.

But some relatives have already dismissed the meeting as carefully choreographed and one that will not offer a platform for frank discussion. "The president will meet with some mothers pulled out of his pocket, who will ask the right questions and thank him," said Olga Tsukanova, an activist mother.

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 26 2022

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