People arrested at Russia protest demanding the return of troops from Ukraine

Accounts indicate that at a rally in the heart of Moscow, about two dozen individuals, mostly journalists, were briefly taken into custody as the wives and relatives of Russian soldiers, deployed to fight in Ukraine, made a call for their return, as per news sources. The protestors, consisting of soldiers’ relatives, congregated to place flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier just outside the Kremlin walls. They were marking 500 days since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial mobilisation” of up to 300,000 reservists in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
The mobilization had received widespread disapproval and the wives and relatives of some of the reservists have been campaigning for their discharge and replacement with professional soldiers.
Saturday’s protest was arranged by a group called The Way Home, which urged “wives, mothers, sisters and children” of reservists from all over Russia to come to Moscow to show solidarity. “We want our husbands back alive,” a protester identified only as Antonina in a video published by independent Russian news outlet SOTAvision can be heard saying. Antonina emphasized that she does not seek compensation from the Russian government if her husband is killed, and stated that she would either go to a convent or follow him.

Unauthorized Gathering
This was the ninth and most significant of the weekly gatherings organized by The Way Home. According to a popular Russian Telegram news channel, around 200 individuals turned up for the demonstration. Reuters reported that about 20 people, including a Reuters journalist and an AFP video journalist, were detained and then released at the protest. OVD-Info, an independent website that monitors political arrests in Russia, stated that police apprehended 27 individuals during the protest, with most of them being journalists.
The police detained a group of Russian and foreign male reporters outside Red Square and took them to a police station. According to SOTA, most of them were later released, though a male protester remained in detention on Saturday evening. Additionally, several individuals were apprehended at other locations in central Moscow while protesting against the mobilization, as per OVD-Info. Allies of imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexey Navalny and Russian opposition politician Maksim Kats expressed their support for the protest on Friday, while the Moscow prosecutor’s office cautioned Russians not to participate in “unauthorized mass events”.

‘A Tragic Situation’
The calls from wives and relatives to bring back mobilized Russian reservists have been disregarded by the state-controlled media, and some pro-Kremlin politicians have tried to portray them as agents of the West. The protesters on Saturday vehemently refuted the accusation. Maria Andreyeva, whose husband and brother are involved in the conflict in Ukraine, conveyed to SOTAvision that she viewed the fighting in Ukraine as “a great tragedy that occurred between two brotherly peoples”.
“Almost every Russian has relatives in Ukraine, close and distant, so … this is a situation that has struck us to the core. After the second world war, it seemed to us that our grandfathers died so that there would never be another [conflict],” Andreyeva expressed. The protest took place a few weeks before the Russian presidential election, slated for March, that Putin is almost certain to win.
After Andreyeva and others laid flowers at the monument, they went to Putin’s campaign headquarters to present their demands to him. Last month, another Russian presidential hopeful met with Andreyeva and other soldiers’ relatives advocating for their return. Former local legislator Boris Nadezhdin, who openly opposes the war in Ukraine, criticized the Kremlin’s decision to keep them in the ranks as long as the fighting continues. “We want [the authorities] to treat people who are doing their duty in a decent way,” Nadezhdin remarked.