Yahoo News Russian Wives Now Threatening Ride-Share to Go Get Their Men Back From Ukraine
More than 20 wives of Russian draftees are threatening to hitch a ride to the frontline in Ukraine to pull their husbands out of the war, according to a new report.
The women, from the Kursk and Voronezh regions, have traveled to Belgorod to confront the military leadership at the base from where their husbands were sent, the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reports.
“We’re stopping the cars that go through the [guard] post. We’re tearfully asking them to give us cars to pull our guys out of there. We told them one thing—if they don’t come out and help us, then we, including a pregnant girl, will go to the frontline. If they won’t help [our guys], then we will. We’re going to get our husbands, there’s no other way,” one woman was quoted saying from the city of Valuyki.
The wives’ uprising at the military base is just the latest demonstration of growing outrage from family members of draftees who say the Russian military has knowingly sent the men to die in Ukraine with no equipment, training, or leadership. It’s also just the latest evidence of waning domestic support for the war as more and more ordinary Russians feel just a fraction of the fallout that Ukrainians have been suffering for nearly nine months.
Mad Dash to Flee Village Swarming With Putin’s Drunken Troops
“They sent them to the frontline and tossed them like meat,” the sister of one of the draftees told Mozhem Obyashnit.
The men are now said to be hiding out in a forest in Ukraine’s Luhansk region after the rest of their squadron was almost entirely decimated, leaving just over 30 survivors out of 200 men. Family members say the men have been completely thrown under the bus by military leadership, with official Russian Defense Ministry documents listing them as “deserters” who absconded from a base in the Kursk region, rather than draftees sent to fight in Ukraine, Verstka reported.
Some of the drafted men have accused the Russian military of deliberately using newly mobilized and poorly trained men as cannon fodder, sending them directly to the frontline with faulty weapons while higher ranking military personnel hang back at a distance to shoot anyone who retreats.
The wives in Belgorod said they have now been told the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoyt, has traveled to Moscow to speak with Vladimir Putin directly about rescuing the troops abandoned in Luhansk.
Family members of draftees from the Vladimir region have also appealed directly to Putin, releasing a video in which they call on him to “take the necessary measures” after the men were duped and sent to the frontline in Luhansk without training, food, or supplies.
“The fucking ‘second-[greatest] army in the world.’ What, from 5 to 10 years for leaving our positions? I’m shocked,” one of the draftees said in a video sent to family members and released by independent Russian media.
The wives of men drafted from the Vologda region are also calling on the Russian government to return their husbands, describing a similar situation in a video appeal to the governor.
After being sent into a “fire trap” in the Luhansk region, they said, the draftees were “killed by both the enemy and our Russian army.”
“The time has come to act, and not to think and wait while everyone is cut down in this bloody meat grinder,” one of the wives said.
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