The government silences the voices of women whose husbands are mobilized in Ukraine

In Russia, there will no longer be any demonstrations against the war in Ukraine. The authorities have just put out the last movement whose freedom of expression they still tolerated.

There were only them left: these women whose civilian husbands were mobilized in the fall of 2022 to reinforce the army on the Ukrainian front and who have still not returned. Until the beginning of 2024, there were still a few dozen of them braving their fear to meet every week, red carnation in hand, in front of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the foot of the Kremlin walls.

The name of their movement: “The Way Home”. No question of protesting”the special operation” of Vladimir Putin at the risk of ending up in prison. The simple fact of publicly asking that their men be replaced by volunteers is already irritating for the regime. An extremely rare and risky act. In February 2024, a series of arrests of women, but also of journalists who covered their gathering, forced them to be more discreet. The Kremlin also does not view the relative popularity of the movement on Telegram very favorably.

This time, these women are truly silenced. The tailing, the cars parked under their windows, the threats made to their men on the front have ended up discouraging the most tenacious. The figurehead of the movement, Maria Andreyeva, 34, was labeled in May “foreign agent“, a catch-all formula that allows the authorities to issue all possible and imaginable bans. Maria Andreyeva, who is a pediatrician, thus no longer has the right to work in a public institution. On Monday, August 5, 2024, she announced on Telegram that she had to leave her job. The next day, she explained that she was giving up her fight: “I must return to the shadows“The Kremlin has won.

The repression of other dissident voices continues. The recent prisoner exchanges between Moscow and the West should not make us forget that the government is determined to put the country under lockdown. Anything that does not follow the Kremlin’s line is considered hostile. On August 5, for example, it was the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation (which promotes democracy) that was declared “undesirable” and banned. A totally symbolic decision since the foundation is no longer even present in Russia.

Social networks are also in the crosshairs of the authorities, who have considerably reduced the flow rate of YouTube. It now takes five times longer than before to download a video from the American site, in a country where Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have already been banned since 2022.

The retaliatory measure is fully assumed by the deputies in particular, who explain that it was Google that started it, that the search engine should not have suspended the channels of bloggers, journalists and pro-Kremlin artists (including the singer Shaman). A demonstration, authorized by the Kremlin this time, took place on July 16, 2024 in front of the American embassy in Moscow to denounce Google’s Russophobia.