In a rare challenge to the Kremlin, a growing number of Russian women are fighting to bring home their husbands, brothers and sons who were drafted to fight in Ukraine.
They say the men have served their time on the front lines, 15 months after some 300,000 reservists were called up to bolster Russia’s struggling campaign. But with little sign of President Vladimir Putin scaling back his ambitions, the military is ignoring their pleas and propagandists have sought to villainize those speaking out.
The women’s mounting frustration has bonded them together, providing common cause in their defiant public stand just months before Putin will extend his rule in an election.
NBC News spoke with a number of women who are part of a growing movement calling for their loved ones to be discharged and allowed to return to civilian life. They have emerged as among the few voices in Russia willing to publicly question how the Kremlin is conducting the war, which continues to reshape the country even as it descends into a stalemate.
Asya is one of those who is desperate for her husband to return home.
He was drafted in September 2022, she said, and is still in Ukraine serving in an artillery unit more than a year later.
She said she now fears her husband, who worked as a driver before he was called up, will be stuck there indefinitely.
“You try to dig yourself out of this pit every day and think, ‘How long can this carry on?’” Asya said, speaking on the phone from her home in the Moscow region. “How long can they mock us like this?”
Asya said she is struggling to cope by herself with their 1 1/2-year-old daughter. “I was not planning to be a single mother,” she said. “I need a husband at home.”
Like others in the story, she did not want her last name or the name of her husband to be published out of fear of retribution against her family. Putin’s war next door has brought a far-reaching crackdown on dissent at home, and anything that can be perceived as an…
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