Relatives of mobilized soldiers ask Putin to recall them from assault units

Relatives of men mobilized from outside of Moscow sent a video appeal to President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, asking that their sons and husbands be returned from assault units.

The women who made the video say their relatives were mobilized in September 2022. The men spent three months in artillery training. At the end of December, they were sent into the combat zone, but waited another two months for weapons. After that, the relatives say, the men were told that they were now assault infantry and sent to the frontlines.

“Our mobilized men are tossed like pieces of meat into fortified areas. Five men go up against 100 well-armed enemies,” said the soldiers’ relatives. They asked that the men be withdrawn from the front and supplied with weapons and ammunition. 

The mobilized men themselves previously recorded a video appeal in which they also asked Vladimir Putin to withdraw them from the frontlines, and to provide guns and ammunition.

The New York Times recently reported that the Russian side has resorted to sending small groups of infantry to storm Ukrainian trenches, knowing that the first wave of soldiers are unlikely to survive. “Ukrainian soldiers,” the report says, “have taken to calling these groups ‘meat.’”