Remember Afghanistan: The Kremlin censories protests by relatives

Russian propagandist Volodymyr Solovyov criticized the protests of the "Way Home" on February 3, accusing their wives in the absence of authority to protect the interests of Russian soldiers on the forefront, since they are not a mother of soldiers. About it writes "Institute of War Study" in the summary of February 3. Solovyov wondered if men allow their wives to defend their interests, as well as whether this movement is "another committee of soldiers' mothers.

" In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet leadership in its own experience felt the influence of social movements of relatives of Russian soldiers. The Human Rights Organization The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia was founded in 1989. Its participants called for improving service conditions for Soviet conscripts who suffered from the Didovshchina.

The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers also called for greater transparency in the Soviet Armed Forces due to the death of military in Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as in peacetime. The activity of the Committee was so effective that it forced the Soviet leadership to make radical changes in the 1990s, in particular, to hold the corrupt military prosecutors and officials of the military prosecutor's office.

The nightingale of this organization indicates how much the Kremlin leadership is afraid of such movements, even in a few decades. Russian President Vladimir Putin, perhaps, remembering that the Soviet Union could not completely censourize the movement of relatives of the military, changed tactics somewhat. Now, limited censorship and discredit are used to prevent such movements, analysts say.

The Russian authorities tried to stop the activities of the "Council of Mothers and Wives", founded in September 2022, and in May 2023 recognized the organization by a foreign agent after the likely threat of criminal prosecution to its founders.

At the end of January 2024, the Russian opposition media reported that the Russian authorities tried to break the participants' accounts "way home" on social networks, and that the representatives of the movement pursued them during the previous demonstrations. In the Russian information space, the statement is spread that Ukrainian agents are governed by the "way home", or that its leadership is corrupt.