At the end of October, an extraordinary appeal appeared in the Russian messaging service Telegram.
– We were screwed and you are being screwed. We remember how president [Putin] promised, that reservists are not called up for service. Then they sent our relatives to Ukraine. The promises turned out to be empty. Many never return. The mobilization turned out to be a terrible mistake, the petition says.
The petition refers to the mobilization that Russia announced in the fall of 2022. With that, hundreds of thousands of Russian conscripts were ordered to the front in Ukraine.
The petition was published On a channel called Put Domoi. The name of the channel is directly translated into Finnish as “the way home”. The channel has more than 33,000 subscribers, and it is maintained by a mixed group of relatives of Russian conscripts.
The bottom line of the petition drawn up by the relatives is that all Russian reservists assigned to Ukraine should be brought off the front and that the maximum length of service should be limited to one year.
The petition also opposes “slavery legalized through business advocacy”, the treatment of conscripts as an “expendable resource” and the oppression of family members and friends participating in demonstrations.
The group is also tried to organize demonstrations in dozens of different cities. Active group members have also glued stickers to their carswhich read: “bring my husband back, I’m sick of this shit”.
The group does not directly oppose Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
– Everyone has the right to decide things themselves. However, we support the party that brings our men back, the petition says.
The Put Domoi group also claims to be non-political. However, the group’s language and attempts to influence are exceptionally bold and direct. Has an anti-war movement finally emerged in Russia that is capable of bringing about change?
A movement of ordinary people that started on social media in August
Professor by Vladimir Gelman according to Put Domoi is quite a young phenomenon. It started in August, when families of soldiers founded a Telegram channel.
– At first, they shared information on the channel about how to write joint appeals to MPs. They did not achieve a result. That’s why group members have now started organizing demonstrations in different parts of the country, says Gelman.
Gelman is a researcher of Russian politics at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, and he is familiar with the Put Domoi group.
According to Gelman, the group is exceptional in the sense that it seems to have been born “from the bottom up” and not engineered by the elite.
– This was quite a big surprise for many who were following the matter. Based on the Telegram channel, these people are ordinary housewives and wives.
Gelman describes the movement as “a typical one-issue movement”. A similar protest movement operated during the first Chechen war in Russia.
– I consider Put Domoi a kind of continuation of the activism during the Chechen war.
In its most recent move, Russia ordered an estimated 300,000 conscripts to Ukraine. A protest movement of hundreds of thousands of people could potentially develop from the relatives of those who were forced to the frontline.
Gelman points out that the activities of the Put Domoi movement are disorganized. It is also not clear how active the people who joined the channel are.
– Apart from Telegram, the movement has no functioning organization and no experience in political activism.
According to Gelman, the movement seems to be an activism of the urban middle class. Most of the Russians who have come to the front due to the launch of the movement come from remote regions of the country.
– Most of those mobilized come from poor backgrounds. They do not actively use the Internet, and they are not very aware of the political climate. It can exclude a significant portion of those affected.
The Kremlin believes that the protest movement can influence the script of the election drama and the possible launch of the movement
However, the movement has been noticed in the Kremlin. The concern of Putin’s core group is now that Put Domoi can grow into a large and visible protest movement.
Gelman believes that the Kremlin’s concern is due to the upcoming so-called presidential elections in Russia. And it can speak of a new business proposal, he says.
– My assumption is that the Kremlin will expand the business support after the elections. Therefore, suppressing demonstrations can be important because of the elections but also because of a possible new movement.
American think tank ISW confirms Gelman’s assessment: the Kremlin is worried about the relatives’ protests, because they could negatively affect Putin’s upcoming presidential campaign.
Electoral authorities have already been instructed to take soldiers’ relatives into account and help solve their problems, says a Russian economic newspaper Kommersant.
Russian investigative journalism site The Insider tells on the other hand, that “work” with the mobilized relatives has been assigned as one of the most important tasks of the local authorities, and the Russian presidential administration reminds them about it repeatedly.
The insider also says that military families are a risk factor that “foreign malicious parties” can use to destabilize Russia’s internal situation before the presidential election.
– The task is to stop the external protest at any cost. By insuring, promising, paying. By any means, as long as the protests don’t take to the streets. Not even with 50 people, Insider’s source says.
Gelman of the University of Helsinki is not surprised that the Kremlin delegates tasks to local level officials.
– The movement is not led by activists who could get caught and be silenced. Therefore, it is necessary to target local groups across the country.
The authorities have prevented members of the movement from expressing their opinion publicly. Various parties have also censored its social media channels.
For example, in Moscow in October, the authorities told women planning demonstrations that there was no point in planning demonstrations due to the still valid corona restrictions. At the same time, the Russian Communist Party was allowed to organize a demonstration.
In the Kemorovo area, the police “visited” six women who had participated in discussions about expressions of opinion, and warned them not to participate in demonstrations under the threat of a fine. The police officers also checked the women’s phones and ordered them to show their subscriptions to Telegram channels. The discussion group of the Kemorovo region left the message service shortly after the incident.
At the end of November, Telegram put Put Domoi on the channel counterfeit stamp. Telegram stamps a channel if enough users report that the channel is “portraying a famous person or organization”.
Channel administrators told Agentstvo magazine, that the stamp was the result of a “coordinated attack” by Kremlin propagandists. An influential propagandist Vladimir Solovyov announced over a million followers on his Telegram channel That Put Domoi is part of the “revolutionary activities of a foreign government”.
The shop’s channels have also been attacked using bots, which aim to spread within the channel disparaging work of the shop message.
According to Professor Gelman, the Put Domoi movement is a clear consequence of Russia oppressing civil society.
– When the war just goes on and on, it’s no wonder that more and more people express their disappointment. Activities can be restricted in many ways, such as by pressure, intimidation and bribery.