Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is not going as easily as planned, and (over 100 days into the invasion) troops’ wives are incensed over their mystery whereabouts. It’s a sad addendum to news that Putin’s crumbling army is losing officers like crazy (including a top commander, “The Executioner,” who got whacked by a Ukrainian sniper). Things are also very much not great at home for Putin with rumors of ill health and assassination attempts swirling, prompting his inner circle to allegedly plot to insert a successor while Putin’s political future appears to be in jeopardy for various reasons.
On the battlefield, troops have already been reported to have had enough with the Kremlin’s ill-advised, shoddy plans. Putin seems to have expected Ukraine to immediately fold, which didn’t happen (President Volodymyr Zelensky’s digging in his feet, as are his people), and leaked audio revealed how troops threatened to blow up their general. Back to the homefront, though, wives of some of those troops are demanding answers after their husbands were due back on June 6 but never materialized. And the Kremlin has ignored their pleas for information.
As Newsweek reports (while posting sensitive video footage), these emotional wives are marching in the streets after their husbands were ordered into battle in eastern Ukraine, and four months later, no one will say where they are:
“From their 121st regiment, only the 4th company (battalion) made it here,” the woman said, adding that the military unit “refuses” to tell them where their husbands are and that nobody is giving them any information.
“Where are our husbands? This is how they mobilized our husbands, took them from their jobs–they haven’t been home even for a day,” the woman said. “We don’t know what’s happening to them now, whether they are alive or not, no one can give us an answer to that. How is this possible? Two hundred people, is that a needle in a haystack? Answer us, to whom should we appeal?”
It’s a sobering reminder that, after the world delighted at Putin’s botched invasion and endless reports of fired and/or missing commanders, plenty of troops are falling by the wayside (or simply missing or lost) as well. And it appears that the Kremlin isn’t even letting their families know what’s happening to their loved ones (husbands, fathers, and sons) from this region, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), where all men were involuntarily mobilized into this ongoing cluster of a war.
(Via Newsweek)