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The authorities are trying to ensure that Russians do not notice the war, and people are trying to get used to it and live their normal lives. However, there are those who cannot do this — primarily the wives, mothers, and other relatives of those who are at war or in the army during wartime. It would seem that they should have reassessed their attitude towards what is happening — but no, a study by the Public Sociology Laboratory (PS Lab) has shown. IStories publishes excerpts from the report.

In previous studies, PS Lab showed that most Russians justify the war without being its convinced supporters (PS Lab calls them “non-opponents” of the war) — they were helped in this by the attitude towards the state, formed over the years of Putin’s rule, as an entity separate from the people and which they cannot influence. Also, the fact that Russians justify not the war itself, but themselves, and how, because of the war, they have stopped thinking about the future.

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[Some statements by Russian mothers whose sons are on the frontline in Ukraine as cited by a recent study by PS Lab:]

“When he [my son] was taken, they immediately told him that he would go to serve in Crimea. <…> I started looking for information… and seemed to calm down. <…> But then suddenly I found out that those demobilized soldiers who were stationed there on the border… They were suddenly bombed. And allegedly there are casualties. <…> Well, of course, I looked for this information on the internet. I didn’t find it there. Accordingly, it’s possible that it wasn’t posted. I found a bunch of other information instead, which shocked me. <…> Well, I realized that this is an unsafe territory for children to be in.” (Russian mother, about 44 years old, quality inspector at a factory)

[My son] started having problems with his legs, with his veins, he was getting worse and worse. He was already having difficulty moving. <…> And that’s when I started ringing the alarm bells, realizing that they weren’t even putting him in the hospital (Russian mother, about 50 years old, school administrator)

[Russian citizen] Anna’s son spent a significant part of his service in various medical institutions, in one of which he was beaten so that he “wouldn’t complain,” but he was only able to receive a diagnosis and the necessary medical care after demobilization. The stories told by the mothers of conscripts show: the army easily accepts those who should not be there, but has difficulty letting them go.

My son was injured there [In Ukraine], defending the homeland, but he’s no longer entitled to any payments. He ruined his health. He left healthy, and now his eyesight has deteriorated, and everything, and his speech is gone. But the state said: “If he had been wounded, he would have received [payments]. But this way — no.” How can one feel and what can one say, tell me? (Russian mother, about 50 years old)

There [in the army] are a lot of problems. And if the government was sort of expecting to declare such hostilities — they should have prepared better. Then I am very surprised by the fact that there are very few children of officials in this war… The media talks so much about patriotism… And now it turns out that our children, who were driven there, are [fighting] — just mobilized. Where is our contract army then? (Russian mother of conscript, about 44 years old, quality inspector at a factory)

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The unwillingness [among Russian citizens] to blame the state for their troubles and condemn the war stems, on the one hand, from the experience of interacting with the state — confusing and often meaningless. Who is to blame if it is not always clear what happened and who to contact? On the other hand, this unwillingness to blame reflects the perception of many people of the state as an unpredictable force that acts according to its own laws: it takes children, moves them, returns them crippled, dead, or does not return them at all. It is useless to fight such a state, therefore it is useless to criticize it — this is how many mothers of mobilized soldiers and conscripts reason. Except that sometimes you can try to get small concessions from it.

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