The powerful grassroots diplomacy of Russian soldiers’ mothers to bring their sons home

It all started at the time of the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan, and then continued in the Russian Federation, where a network of soldiers’ mothers was created.

In the 1980s, before social networking and the web, Russian mothers found ways to recognise each other, share grief and unite efforts for their sons who disappeared, were taken prisoner or died in war. With the two wars in Chechnya, the network developed further and the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers was founded. The first congress in Moscow in 1989 gave consolidated form to the activities that had sprung up spontaneously in many parts of the Country. The capacity for action of this network of women in Chechnya developed to such an extent that it became an international example of dialogue intervention in a conflict. There are extraordinarily important initiatives to identify soldiers taken prisoner as well as those fallen and missing.

All thanks to the ability of women and especially mothers to establish relationships with their counterparts across the front. A powerful diplomacy from below that through mutual understanding enables divisions otherwise unimaginable in war to be overcome.

With the aggression against Ukraine, things took an even more difficult turn. Despite conditions bordering on impossible to act, the Union mothers played an important role by providing information and legal advice to young men invited to report to the barracks or already enlisted and sent to the front. They were made aware of their rights, and responded to parents, wives or girlfriends who asked how and what to do to get information on how to recover their men who had ended up at the front.

In an interview with the Russian journalist Catherine Gordeeva, Valentina Melnikova, the inspirational soul of the Union, said that on February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, her worries turned out to be like those of Cassandra. By December, they had noticed an escalation of tension. Too many soldiers from all over the country massed along the border. They started calling mothers saying their children were in the area and asked what they could do. The Mothers’ Union urged them to go get them by any means; no one could force them to fight. It was not easy to explain this to those who feared that taking them away might be tantamount to desertion with the risk of being shot. With the invasion and the spreading of messages and videos that showed what was happening, fear became anguish and those who could did what they could to recover their sons and husbands.

Intervening in the context of war is extremely dangerous. Yet it has been done. Through contacts with those who held them prisoner, several men have been rescued.

Compared to the times of the wars in Chechnya, today there is more repression on civil society.  On the other hand, the possibility of action has grown thanks to the internet. The gathering and sharing of information in real time makes it possible to get in touch and combine efforts. The interventions so far are of different kinds. Mothers write documents and appeals to civil and military authorities. They search for news on those missing for a long time, to find out if the missing person is a prisoner or has died; they collect information on where they can recover the body to return it to the family. In particular, they try to bring home the conscripts, those young men of conscription age who were drafted and sent to the front to fight.

Today, this remains a place where mothers manage, against the tide, to play a peacemaking role. As they often say, if the decision-makers asked them, there would be no war because no mother would want to bury her child.

By Raffaella Chiodo Karpinsky
Human rights activist