The Russian president is expected to sign a number of bilateral documents and discuss sensitive topics with Kim Jong-un
Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived at Pyongyang International Airport, marking the start of his two-day visit to North Korea, during which he is expected to have a lengthy face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un.
The Russian president arrived in the country on Tuesday evening, with most of the talks and events scheduled for the next day. He was greeted at the airport by a delegation of North Korean officials, as well as plaques praising the friendship between the two nations, while the road leading from the airport was lined with Russian flags and portraits of Putin.
The Russian delegation includes numerous top officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, and Transport Minister Roman Starovoyt, as well as Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov, and the head of Russian Railways Oleg Belozyorov.
Putin and Kim are expected to sign a number of bilateral documents, with the Russian leader having earlier authorized the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement with North Korea, which outlines “the prospects for further cooperation” between Moscow and Pyongyang.
Putin’s last visit to North Korea was in 2000, when he met with Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader. Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East last September, with the visit focusing on military and economic cooperation.
In the run-up to his visit, Putin said Russia had consistently supported North Korea in its long “struggle against the treacherous, dangerous and aggressive enemy,” referring to the Western states. The Kremlin has also praised North Korea’s vocal support for Russia in the Ukraine conflict, noting that Pyongyang “understands the true reasons and the essence” of the crisis.
D/C: Putin yet again trying to scare the west .. or?
By Sumi Somaskanda & Tiffany Wertheimer, BBC NewsChina should face “economic cost” for Russia support – Jens Stoltenberg
The head of Nato has told the BBC that China should face consequences for supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, if it does not change its ways.
Jens Stoltenberg said Beijing was “trying to get it both ways” by supporting Russia’s war effort, while also trying to maintain relationships with European allies.
“This cannot work in the long run,” Mr Stoltenberg told BBC News during a visit to Washington.
In the wide ranging interview, Mr Stoltenberg also addressed nuclear weapons and defence spending.
His comments come as Russia shows no sign of easing its war against Ukraine.
A peace summit held in Switzerland at the weekend saw dozens of nations commit to supporting Kyiv, but Russia called it a waste of time and said it would only agree to peace talks if Ukraine essentially surrendered.
When pressed on what Nato members might do about China’s support of Russia, Mr Stoltenberg said there was an “ongoing conversation” about possible sanctions.
He said China was “sharing a lot of technologies, [like] micro-electronics, which are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine”.
He added that “at some stage, we should consider some kind of economic cost if China doesn’t change their behaviour”.
Beijing is already under some sanctions for its support of Russia – last month, the US announced restrictions that would target about 20 firms based in China and Hong Kong.
China has defended its business with Moscow, saying it is not selling lethal arms and “prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations”.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has devastated Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin has clearly said he has no intention of pulling back
Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage since it launched its full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. Mr Putin has repeatedly said that the West’s balance of power is shifting, and he has worked to strengthen ties with like-minded leaders.
“Russia right now is aligning more and more with authoritarian leaders,” Mr Stoltenberg told the BBC, listing Iran, Beijing and North Korea.
He said that the North has sent artillery shells to Russia, and in return Russia had given advanced technology for North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.
“So North Korea is helping Russia to conduct a war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Speaking ahead of a meeting with US President Joe Biden, the Nato chief also announced that more than 20 nations are expected to meet a defence spending target of 2% this year – more than any other year since it was pledged in 2014.
“This is good for Europe and good for America, especially since much of this extra money is spent here in the United States,” he said.
Mr Stoltenberg also addressed comments that he made to the Telegraph on Sunday which indicated that Nato may be considering increasing the number of deployable warheads as a deterrent against growing threats from Russia and China.
The comments were criticised as “nothing but another escalation of tension” by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
But Mr Stoltenberg said they were a “general message” that Nato is a nuclear alliance, and that any attack on a Nato member will “trigger a response from the whole alliance”.
“The purpose of Nato is not to fight the war, the purpose of that is to prevent the war,” he said.
Should the European NATO members manage to provoke Moscow into a nuclear response, the Americans might stay on the sidelines, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, Putin was asked about the increasingly belligerent rhetoric from some European capitals, which moderator Sergey Karaganov compared to the baying of hyenas.
“The Europeans have to think: if those with whom we exchange such [nuclear] blows are obliterated, would the Americans get involved in such an exchange, on the level of strategic weapons, or not? I very much doubt it,” Putin said in response.
The Russian president explained that, while the US and Russia both have well-developed early warning systems to detect incoming missiles, the European members of NATO do not. “In this sense, they are more or less defenseless,” he said.
Moreover, Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are “three to four times more powerful than the bombs the Americans used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Putin said. “We have many times more of them – both on the European continent, and even if the Americans bring theirs over from the US – we still have many times more.”
Any such war would have “infinite casualties,” the Russian president warned.
While not ruling out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Putin reminded the audience that it currently only allows the use of atomic weapons in case of threats to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, which is presently not the case.
Nor has Moscow ever brandished nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, that being a malicious fabrication of some Western politicians, he added.
There is no need to even bring up nuclear escalation when the Russian military and defense industry are effective and far more capable than its adversaries when it comes to armor and aviation, Putin said.
The US and its allies have funneled weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine over the past two years, while insisting they wanted to inflict “a strategic defeat” on Russia – but weren’t a party to the conflict. In recent weeks, Washington, London and some other NATO members announced they were lifting restrictions on Kiev’s use of their weapons against Russia, prompting calls for Moscow to retaliate.
Citing the need to send the West a message, last month the Kremlin ordered the military district that borders Ukraine to carry out drills in deploying non-strategic nuclear weapons.
D/C: Putin is definitely trying to dial up the “scary factor of nuclear weapons” . Most probably to disturb current elections around the world and create a very nasty fear factor. Putin’s media chess move number three!!
Lukashenko, pictured here in July 2023, may have muddied Putin’s claims that Ukraine was involved in the attack on a Moscow concert hall.Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images CNN —
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appears to have cast doubt on Russia’s claims that Ukraine was involved in the brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall last week.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, which killed at least 139 people, and released graphic footage of the incident, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine had helped orchestrate it.
Putin on Saturday claimed that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine, which Kyiv has denied.
But Lukashenko, one of Putin’s most loyal allies, on Tuesday appeared to contradict the Kremlin’s claims, saying that the attackers initially intended to enter Belarus rather than Ukraine.
“They could not enter Belarus. Their handlers… knew that it would be a very bad idea to try to enter Belarus, because Belarus immediately reinforced security measures,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian news agency Belta.
Lukashenko said he received reports from Russian authorities “minutes” after the attack began and put Belarusian units on combat alert, setting up checkpoints on roads to prevent the attackers entering the country.
“That’s why there was no chance they could enter Belarus. They realized it. So they took a turn and headed to the Ukraine-Russia border,” he said.
The attackers stormed Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb on Friday, shooting civilians at point blank before setting the building on fire, causing the roof to collapse while concert-goers were still inside.
Four suspects, who are from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan but worked in Russia on temporary or expired visas, were detained later Friday night in Russia’s Bryansk region, near the border with Ukraine and Belarus.
In his first national address after the attack, Putin on Saturday alleged that the men “tried to hide and move towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border.”
Putin on Monday conceded the attack had been carried out by “radical Islamists,” but still tried to pin ultimate responsibility on Ukraine.
Putin lights a candle on Sunday in memory of victims of the Crocus City Hall attack.Kremlin
Other Kremlin officials have doubled down on the claims. Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB), alleged on Tuesday that Ukraine was involved in the “training of militants in the Middle East.”
Ukraine has vehemently denied involvement in the attack and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.” Others have speculated why the attackers would try to flee through a heavily militarized section of the border, with a large Russian troop presence.
And Lukashenko, in attempting to promote Belarus’ standing as a reliable ally of Russia, may have inadvertently further weakened Putin’s allegations.
Belta reported that Lukashenko agreed to “seal off its section of the road that could be used by the criminals” when he received intelligence from Russian officials, including Bortnikov, that the attackers were “moving in the direction of Bryansk.”
Lukashenko said he and Putin exchanged phone calls, claiming he accepted Putin’s request to help seal off the roads into Belarus. “Absolutely. We are doing everything,” Lukashenko replied.
He said he shared the information because he was aware that Putin had been reproached for his response to the tragedy. Putin had been criticized for not addressing the nation until more than 19 hours after the attack began.
Instead, Lukashenko said, he and Putin “did not sleep for 24 hours,” as they worked to address the threat.
Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, a suspect in the attack, appears Sunday at the Basmanny district court in Moscow.Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
A total of 11 people have been arrested in connection with the attack on the concert hall, Russian officials said.Four appeared in a Moscow court on Sunday and three on Monday. It’s not clear if the remaining four are still in detention or have appeared before a judge.
Three of the Tajik suspects were bent double as they were marched into a Moscow courtroom on Sunday, while the fourth was in a wheelchair and appeared unresponsive. They were charged with terrorism and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The men looked battered and bruised as they were brought into the courtroom. Videos circulated widely on Russian social media appeared to show some of them being violently interrogated, including one that appeared to show the use of electrocution. In another video, a suspect had part of his ear cut off and stuffed in his mouth.
D/C: Not the greatest PR campaign on the part of Russia!
“ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, which killed at least 139 people, and released graphic footage of the incident, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine had helped orchestrate it.“
The Nordic nation closed all border crossings with Finland last year after registering a surge in asylum seekers.
Migrants arrive to the international border crossing at Salla, northern Finland [File: Lehtikuva/Jussi Nukari/Reuters]
Published On 15 Mar 202415 Mar 2024
Finland plans to adopt temporary legislation that will allow its border authorities to block asylum seekers seeking to enter its territory from Russia, the government has said.
Finland closed all crossings on its 1,340km (830-mile) border with Russia late last year amid a growing number of arrivals who did not possess valid documents to enter the European Union.
However, asylum seekers have continued to arrive, and the government believes the numbers could rise significantly with the advent of spring and a rise in temperatures.
Helsinki accuses Moscow of funnelling migrants to the border, a claim the Kremlin has denied.
“Finland has been the target of instrumentalised migration … Russian authorities have not only failed to intervene in this phenomenon but have even facilitated it,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Friday.
Orpo said that the proposed legislation would now be sent out for comments and then sent to parliament for consideration, adding that the government hoped it would be approved as soon as possible.
The interior ministry said in a statement that “Finland must be prepared for the possibility that Russia will exert prolonged pressure”.
The Vaalimaa border checkpoint between Finland and Russia in Virolahti, Finland [File: Lehtikuva/Lauri Heino/Reuters]
The Finnish border authority has said more than 1,300 asylum seekers from nations including Yemen, Somalia and Syria entered from Russia between August and December last year.
Prior to this period, the number had averaged just one person a day.
In February, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said the authorities had information that thousands of people were on the Russian side waiting to travel to Finland.
Increased tensions
Last year, Finland abandoned its long-held position of military non-alignment and joined the NATO alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a move that angered Moscow.
Finland’s Nordic neighbour, Sweden also joined NATO earlier this month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Wednesday that Finland and Sweden’s decision to join the alliance was “a meaningless step”.
Putin said that Russia would deploy troops and “systems of destruction” to the Finnish border in response.
Russia has threatened to take unspecified “political and military-technical counter-measures” in response to Sweden’s entry into NATO.
D/C: Very scary for Finland, need to keep on top of this!!
Ukrainians and a rights group say people are being coerced to vote by their occupiers in election dismissed as a sham.
Voting in the Russian presidential election is taking place outside Russia’s borders in occupied areas like Mariupol, Ukraine, as Moscow’s invasion drags on into a third year [Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters]
Since February 25, women with name tags and huge stacks of papers have been knocking on every door in the Russia-occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions or approaching residents outside their apartment buildings or houses.
The documents are lists of voters, and the women and, rarely, men are election officials who usually teach in nearby schools, accept utilities payments or work as government clerks.
They ask residents for their IDs and nudge them to fill in an early ballot form with the names of four candidates in Russia’s presidential election, current and former residents of the occupied areas told Al Jazeera.
One of the candidates is Vladimir Putin, who is all but certain to win his fifth election, and the remaining three presidential hopefuls are figureheads from pro-Kremlin parties whose participation is widely understood by observers as an attempt to create an illusion of choice.
The Ukrainians rarely refuse to fill in the ballot for a very persuasive reason – a masked, gun-toting Russian serviceman towering next to the official and a car filled with more armed men nearby, Al Jazeera has learned.
The “voting” usually takes place near the entrance of an apartment, and the election official along with the armed soldier can see whose name is ticked off on the ballot.
“There’s no secrecy of vote,” a former resident of Mariupol told Al Jazeera, speaking about how her friends and relatives voted on Wednesday.
“People who love Ukraine must submit to the regime and pretend they support everything that’s going on because they’re afraid for their lives.”
She added, however, that there are resistance groups that largely consist of young people who leak information about the numbers and location of Russian soldiers and weaponry to Ukrainian intelligence services.
Some locals hope that their participation in the vote will give them a literal free pass out of the occupied area.
“My father-in-law had a heart attack and died. My mother-in-law’s hair turned grey because of what we had gone through. All we want is to leave and never look back,” Tatyana, who lives in the port of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine, which was occupied in late February 2022, told Al Jazeera.
She and her husband voted early, on Monday, unsurprisingly for Putin because they don’t want to be blacklisted by Russia-appointed authorities.
They plan to cross into southern Russia and take a plane to Kazakhstan, where their relatives agreed to shelter them.
The few Ukrainians who refused to vote or badmouthed the election have been rounded up and taken to “basements”, as informal prisons are known in Russia-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, according to the Eastern Human Rights Group, a Ukrainian watchdog.
The rights group and the three Ukrainians Al Jazeera interviewed for this article, whose full names will not be used for safety reasons, reported the threat of guns at polling stations in the occupied regions.
So the only way to safely say “no” is to keep the door closed to election officials and avoid the polling stations that opened on Friday, the first day of Russia’s three-day election.
“Nobody touches” those who stay at home, said a former resident of the Russia-occupied southern town of Enerhodar who fled to Kyiv but is in constant contact with her family and friends at home.
The reason is simple – vote-rigging, which has been documented in Russia in previous elections and is widely expected to be even more pronounced in the occupied parts of Ukraine.
“I think the turnout will be 120 to 150 percent,” the former resident quipped.
Observers agreed – and said Kremlin-appointed officials will compete with each other in vote rigging to report large turnouts and a big percentage of votes for Putin.
“At the pseudo-elections, there will be maximal vote-rigging because local ‘viceroys’ will try to surpass the ‘Chechen count,’” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera, referring to the nearly 100 percent turnouts and pro-Putin votes in Chechnya.
Moscow-appointed “viceroys” openly urge residents of the occupied regions to vote for Putin.
“I’m confident that the activity of our citizens will be high and every resident of the region will vote for our president,” the Russia-installed governor of Zaporizhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, said on Telegram.
On Friday morning, Russian officials reported the early vote turnout – 45 percent in the occupied part of Zaporizhia and 58 percent in the Donetsk and Kherson regions.
The RIA Novosti news agency filed the report at 8:05am (06:05 GMT), five minutes after polling stations opened in public schools and government buildings in the occupied regions.
The election provides the Kremlin with an opportunity to create an illusion for state-controlled media and their Russian audience.
“The authorities formed groups of people who gladly pose for videos to provide a pretty picture. They don’t need to force anyone to go voting. No one is going to riot, get angry,” the former Enerhodar resident said.
Russia permits voting even for those who haven’t yet obtained red Russian passports in a blatant violation of its own election laws.
Wannabe voters can present any valid ID, including a Ukrainian passport or driving license.
Moscow announced strict security measures amid what they call Ukraine’s “information diversions”.
It says Ukrainian intelligence services fish for voters’ information and send threats to election officials.
The threats “look copied and pasted. Only some words are changed” in each of them, Vladimir Vysotsky, chief election official in the Russia-occupied part of the Donetsk region, told the Itar-Tass news agency.
“For the first time, we are holding elections in such a complicated, extreme situation, when such a toxic international situation is created with constant threats and a mass of other negative things,” Russia’s chief election official, Ella Pamfilova, said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian observers wonder aloud about the necessity of elections in Russia, where Putin has become the longest-serving leader since Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin.
“The deep split within the totalitarian reality is manifested through the way Putin fanatically clings to the necessity of extending his endless cadences through ‘election’ while fully neutering the very essence of competition and open ending,” said Svetlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists, a group in Kyiv.
“In Russia, they consider elections as the most prestigious way to legitimise power,” she told Al Jazeera. “But totalitarian reality doesn’t generate any prestige. It only generates fear and submissiveness.”
Kyiv predictably lambasted the vote in the occupied areas.
“The campaign to imitate a presidential election shows Russia’s further insolent disregard for the standards and principles of international law,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.
D/C; Democracy in action, why does Putin even bother!!
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of a threat to the state. Meanwhile, a drone reportedly hit a national security building in Russia. DW has the latest.
What you need to know
Russia’s president reiterated that his country will respond if there is a threat to its statehood, sovereignty or independence.
The blunt warning to the West comes ahead of a presidential vote this week that Putin is expected to win.
Putin praised US President Joe Biden as a veteran politician who fully understands the possible dangers of escalation.
In other related news, the leaders of France and Poland will meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Friday for talks on Ukraine.
Germany to host French, Polish leaders for talks on Ukraine
On Friday, the leaders of France, Germany and Poland will hold talks on Ukraine in Berlin aimed at helping organize further aid for Kyiv.
“In my opinion, these three capitals have the task and the power to mobilize all of Europe” to provide Ukraine with fresh aid, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told state broadcaster TVP late Tuesday from Washington DC.
Friday’s talks come as European countries rally support for Ukraine, which continues to need vast amounts of weapons and ammunition in its ongoing resistance of Russia’s invasion, which has entered its third year.
Germany is Ukraine’s largest European provider of military aid, but Chancellor Scholz is holding back on providing long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, which could reach far into Russian territory.
Ahead of Friday’s trilateral sit-down, which will include Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Chancellor Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will have a bilateral meeting, said Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. The missile issue has been a source of tension between Scholz and Macron, who has urged allies not to be “cowards” in supporting Ukraine.
Moscow warns NATO members that war could spin out of control
Russia has warned that the war in Ukraine could expand geographically and spin out of control because of the “provocative actions” of individual NATO nations.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow felt the West was walking “on the edge of the abyss” and pushing the world closer to the chasm with its actions over Ukraine, in response to a question from the Reuters news agency.
“This conflict is already underway, and has been going on for more than one year,” Zakharova said. “It’s not so much about the risks of this confrontation, but about the risks of an open, hot phase.”
Zakharova also said the West should abandon the idea of strategically defeating Russia
Kyiv’s volunteers warn border region Russians to leave
Volunteer Russian forces fighting alongside Ukrainians against the Kremlin have urged civilians to flee border areas such as Belgorod and Kursk as they plan large-scale attacks on military targets there.
Groups of volunteer fighters, made up of Russians who oppose President Vladimir Putin, said this week they had crossed from Ukraine into Russia and captured a village in the Kursk region.
“We are forced to inflict shelling on military positions that are stationed in the cities of Belgorod and Kursk,” three groups — the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and Sibir — said in a joint statement.
“We call on the local authorities to preserve human lives and begin evacuating the cities of Kursk and Belgorod,” they added.
Moscow denies that the fighters had gained territory and says it has repelled all incursions. The Ukraine-based militias have claimed to have been behind previous incursions into Russian territory.
Pro-Ukraine Russian militia fights against Kremlin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said additional troops and weapons systems would be stationed on the country’s northwestern border with new NATO member Finland.
The announcement came as the Russian leader also warned that Moscow is technically ready for nuclear war.
In an interview on Russian state television, Putin said Finland’s joining NATO was an “absolutely senseless step” that did not align with its national interests.
Both Finland and Sweden applied for membership in the military alliance after Russia staged its all-out invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago. Both countries are now members.
What does NATO gain from Sweden and Sweden gain from NATO?
Putin says Russia ready, not willing, for nuclear war
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia is prepared to use nuclear weapons if there is a threat to his country’s statehood, sovereignty or independence.
In an interview with Russian state television released early Wednesday, Putin delivered a blunt warning to the West: “The nations that say they have no red lines regarding Russia should realize that Russia won’t have any red lines regarding them either.”
He added that “no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to defeat and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.”
Putin said Russia’s nuclear triad — nuclear weapons delivered by land, sea and air — was “much more” advanced than those in the West.
“Our triad, the nuclear triad, it is more modern than any other triad,” he said. “Only we and the Americans actually have such triads. And we have advanced much more here,”
The Russian leader has repeatedly spoken about his readiness to use nuclear weapons since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin praised US President Joe Biden as someone who fully understands the possible dangers of nuclear escalation, and said he doesn’t think that the world is heading to a nuclear war.
In his state-of-the-nation address last month, Putin warned the West that deepening its involvement in the fighting in Ukraine would risk a nuclear war.
Putin warns of nuclear war if NATO troops sent to Ukraine
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said France, Germany and Poland are set to hold emergency talks on Ukraine in Berlin on Friday.
The summit of the Weimar Triangle, a format of the three countries that was initially created in 1991, was described as an “emergency and unplanned.”
Tusk made his announcement after discussions about Ukraine in Washington.
Poland is among Ukraine’s strongest allies and has repeatedly urged its Western partners to increase military aid spending for Kyiv to fend off the Russian invasions.
Ukraine strike hits Russian security building
Russia’s TASS news agency says a Ukrainian drone hit a building used by the FSB state security service in the city of Belgorod.
The news comes as a wave of drone strikes targeted Russia’s oil refineries and border regions for the second day in a row on Wednesday.
One of the drones sparked a fire and injured several people in the Ryazan region, officials said.
While dozens of drones were launched overnight, regional governors said the vast majority were shot down causing some damage but no victims.
Russia said the drones were aimed at the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, and Voronezh regions.
Maria Andreyeva says her weekly protests are gathering momentum.(Reuters
In short: A growing number of women in Russia are protesting the fact their husbands and sons have been called up to fight in Ukraine.
The group, led by Maria Andreyeva, are risking the ire of the Kremlin by holding weekly gatherings.
What’s next: There is a Russian presidential election in less than two weeks, and the group’s actions are highlighting Vladimir Putin’s unpopular mobilisation policy, at an awkward time.
Maria Andreyeva would have to be one of the bravest women in Russia.
Each Saturday she dons her white scarf and heads to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow to protest her husband’s prolonged absence on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“I simply no longer want my husband to give precious years of his life to the army of the Russian Federation, which — I’m sorry — will not take care of us after,” she told the ABC.
“And I don’t want him to risk his life there. Enough.”
Maria has become the public face of a protest movement in Russia known as Put’ Domoi or Way Home — where the wives and mothers of mobilised soldiers are agitating for their loved ones to be returned from active service.
It’s an act of defiance in a country where dissent is crushed on a daily basis, particularly when it relates to President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Maria Andreyeva makes a point to staff at Vladimir Putin’s election headquarters in January.(Reuters)
Despite the risks, Ms Andreyeva is continuing her weekly protests, where she and other women lay flowers at one of Russia’s best-known monuments to what it calls the Great Patriotic War.
“Any normal person is scared, but I understand that my husband’s life is much more important to me,” she said.
Ms Andreyeva says in January, on the day before one of her protests, she was paid a visit by members of what she understood to be the Centre for Combating Extremism.
“I was visited by police officers … and they told me that it turns out that provocateurs might come to our actions,” she said.
“I told them that provocateurs are purely their problem, and I am not going to cancel the protest.”
Maria’s husband, who she refuses to name, and her cousin, are among the estimated 300,000 Russian citizens who were mobilised for Putin’s war from September 2022.
Within a year of that decree, she joined the wives and mothers of other mobilised men and started campaigning for their return, writing open letters and eventually attending public protests.
“We decided that we would have this action of laying flowers at the eternal flame,” she said.
“We can visit them, we can lay flowers, we have the right [to do it].”
The women are angry that their sons and husbands have been sent to the frontline indefinitely — victims of a form of mobilisation that ends only when President Putin says it does.
“Every woman carries a baby inside for nine months, gives birth to him in agony, and then some man decides that he could go to war against some other country and her child would be killed there,” says Ms Andreyeva.
“That is, all her work, all her health, everything is taken away and flushed down the toilet, there is no other way to say it.”
The risks of speaking out
Speaking out against any aspect of Putin’s war in Ukraine is highly risky in Russia. It’s led to lengthy jail sentences for politicians such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin and anti-war activists like Oleg Orov and Boris Kagarlitsky.
Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist at the Carnegie Centre in Berlin, says the mothers and wives of mobilised soldiers are granted liberties that other protesters don’t get.
“You can’t beat up a group of women, especially women whose husbands are on the front line,” she told the ABC.
“Even the Nazis tolerated the protest of the wives of Jewish husbands who were to be deported. It was the one single case of public political protest in Nazi Germany — the famous wives of the Rosenstrasse.”
Maria Andreyeva’s husband was mobilised in October 2022.(Reuters)
OVD-Info, a human rights group which monitors arrests in Russia, says that at a recent protest of wives and mothers in Moscow at least 27 people were detained — most of them journalists covering the event.
Ms Andreyeva has previously been detained by police at one of the protests but was released without charge.
Dr Schulmann says it’s far harder for authorities to crack down on the women attending these protests than if they were the actions of students or Navalny supporters.
“They possess a certain moral capital which no one else has. You can’t say that they are Western agents. They are in a sense, supporting traditional family values. They want their husbands back,” she said.
“There is a palpable, evident injustice in the way their husbands were treated. They agreed to be mobilised almost a year-and-a-half ago, and now they are still there on the frontline.
“There was no second wave of mobilisation, so they’re kind of fighting for everybody else. This is unjust.”
Vladimir Putin’s military draft has been an unpopular policy domestically.(Sputnik: Pavel Byrkin via Reuters)
Ms Andreyeva has a two-year old daughter and wants her husband back and reunited with his family. She is not only angry that he is fighting in Ukraine indefinitely, but that he was called up in the first place.
“Shoigu [the Defence Minister] promised that [only] reservists would be called up.
“And in the end, it was not just reservists who were called up, but zapasniki — people who simply previously served in the army and then simply lived their life. My husband is a zapasnik.”
The 34-year-old believes that Presidential Decree 647, issued by President Putin in September 2022 when he announced a partial mobilisation, is unconstitutional and “crude”.
“If we look into this decree, there is absolutely no mention that our men should be in Ukraine, should be [sent to fight] at the special military operation,” she said.
“There are no fixed goals there at all about why these people are called to the conflict zone.
“This law, this decree, contradicts not only the Constitution, it contradicts federal legislation on military service in general. So, it simply needs to be repealed.”
But it’s unlikely the mobilisation decree will be reversed. The UK Ministry of Defence estimates that 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the past two years of the conflict.
President Putin needs more troops to keep his campaign going and it’s likely he will try and mobilise more citizens after the election.
Maria Andreyeva’s weekly protests have been growing.(Reuters)
Movement growing
Ms Andreyeva is confident that the movement of wives and mothers is growing. She says they have over 65,000 followers on Telegram and around 20 women regularly turn up at their protests in Moscow. She says their working groups are expanding into regional areas.
“Our flower-laying events take place in many cities of Russia,” she said.
“For our last action, women came from Vladivostok, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Ufa … we are gradually growing.”
She is also calling on the wives of contracted soldiers to join their protest movement.
“Their husbands … they planned that they would serve the Motherland for a year. But the fact is that they too, are in the conflict zone indefinitely, their contracts are extended and extended without anyone consulting them. This is also unfair and illegal.”
Boris Nadezhdin, right, meets the wives of mobilised Russian soldiers including Maria Andreyeva earlier this year.(AP: Alexander Zemlianichenko)
He told the ABC the women had become bolder with their messaging in recent months.
“Before they said something like, Mr Putin, we support you, we support special military operation, but just return our men then take some others,” he said.
“These women are now absolutely against Putin and against the special military operation, because for more than one year they did not achieve the aims.”
Dr Schulmann says since the women began campaigning for an end to the war, polling numbers have shown a slump in support for the conflict.
“During the months that this movement became active, the popularity of the special military operation has sharply declined,” he said.
“We may now state, based on various polling data, that by the end of 2023, the core militaristic support base has shrunk to 10 to 12 per cent.
“The operation had ceased to be popular. We have a basis for saying that. So what the wives say, what they proclaim, resonates with many people.”
D/C; Brave women .. I sincerely hope that this has some impact .. hope the world notices and comments and really supports them a lot more than this!!
Maria Pevchikh says Alexey Navalny was due to be freed in exchange for a Russian FSB assassin imprisoned in Germany.
Navalny, a 47-year-old widely seen as the most prominent opposition voice in Russia, died on February 16 in a maximum-security Arctic penal colony [File: Pavel Golovkin/AP Photo]
Published On 26 Feb 202426 Feb 2024
Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny was close to being freed in a prisoner swap before his sudden death, according to his ally Maria Pevchikh.
In a video posted to YouTube on Monday, Pevchikh claimed the planned swap involved exchanging Navalny and two unnamed US nationals for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) assassin in Germany.
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died at 47 in an Artic penal colony, where he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges when he reportedly collapsed after a walk on the prison grounds.
“Alexey Navalny could be sitting in this seat right now, right today. That’s not a figure of speech, it could and should have happened,” said Pevchikh.
“Navalny should have been out in the next few days because we got a decision about his exchange. In early February, Putin was offered to exchange the killer, FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, who’s serving time for a murder in Berlin, for two American citizens and Alexey Navalny.”
A German spokesperson told a press conference on Monday that the government was aware of the reports of an alleged swap, but could not comment on them.
The Russian hitman Krasikov, who was part of the alleged deal, was jailed for life in Germany after being convicted of killing an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park in 2019 – an assassination that German authorities say was ordered by Russian intelligence services.
In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson earlier in February, Putin signalled that he wanted to get Krasikov back.
While Pevchikh did not name who the US nationals were, Washington said previously that it was trying to return Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, back to the United States.
Pevchikh claimed that the potential deal was in its final stages on the evening of February 15. She said Navalny was killed a day later because Putin could not tolerate the thought of him being free.
World leaders, including in the US, have placed blame for Navalny’s death at the hands of Putin and issued sanctions in response.
However, the Kremlin has denied the allegation that Moscow had anything to do with his sudden death and slammed those making allegations without providing proof.
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