- A Russian mother successfully persuaded the Russian authorities to return her sons from Ukraine.
- Her two sons were conscripts but were never to serve in the Ukraine war, the mother told the BBC.
- She won a case with the military prosecutor’s office and said she lied to my face.
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A Russian mother, initially upset about her two sons’ conscription to the Russian military last year, forced Putin’s government to bring her sons back home after discovering they were wrongfully sent to fight in Ukraine, it said the BBC.
Marina, a pseudonym used by the BBC out of fear of retribution, told the outlet that in 2021 she told her two sons that “it was their duty to the motherland” and she was drafted into the country’s military for a year became.
But months in 2022, Marina worried about her boys when Russian troops were building on the Ukrainian border. When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military invasion of the neighboring country on February 24, Marina heard nothing more from her sons.
“Time has stood still for me. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep,” she told the BBC. “I exchanged messages with the mothers of other conscripts in the same unit. It turned out that many of them had also lost touch with their children.”
In early March, after weeks of denying he had sent young conscripts to war, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov admitted that Russia had sent conscripts to Ukraine – and that they were among the victims.
Marina told the BBC that after weeks and an attempt to go to Ukraine herself, she heard from colleagues in her son’s unit that her sons had signed military contracts to fight in Ukraine.
“I have written to the Attorney General’s Office asking for an investigation,” Marina told the BBC. “I told them that my sons could not have signed military contracts. I was sure. Other mothers also wrote. They all knew their children.”
On March 9, the military prosecutor’s office investigated Marina’s allegation and shortly thereafter sent her sons back to Russia because they had never signed military contracts to fight in Ukraine.
“The guys that came back from there were so skinny, dirty and exhausted,” Marina told the BBC. “Their clothes were torn. My son said, ‘It’s better that you don’t know what happened there.’ But all I cared about was that he came back alive.”
She added that military officers “lied to my face” throughout the war.
“First they lied that my sons were not in Ukraine. Then they lied that they signed military contracts. Officers lied, sergeants lied,” she told the BBC. “Later someone told me they weren’t allowed to tell me the truth. Incredible. They were allowed to break the law and send my sons [to Ukraine]but they were not allowed to tell a mother where her children are.”
She added that other families still live with the nightmare of not knowing where their children are and if they are serving in the war.
“So many sons have not come back and never will. So many mothers are still looking for their children,” Marina said. “My children were different people when they came back. You can see it in her eyes. They’re different. You are disillusioned. I want them to believe again in a bright future, in peace and love. You stopped believing.”