Young Russian conscripts were sent off to fight in Ukraine, not knowing they were being sent to war. Their mothers are protesting forcefully because they have no news of their sons. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people are trying to resist the invaders: an unequal struggle to defend their freedom.
By Sergio Centofanti
In Russia, brave mothers are not afraid to protest because their sons were sent to invade Ukraine without even knowing it. Some are conscripts who have just come of age, young soldiers who do not want to fight someone else’s war.
There are mothers who may agree with the purported reasons for the war, because there is so much propaganda and misinformation, but if you have a son who has been deceived, used and sent to the front to kill and die instead of living and letting live, then the revolt becomes stronger than any fear. That there is now a law which foresees sentences up to 15 years in prison if someone speaks of invasion does not matter. If mothers are rebelling, a regime has to worry.
There are Russian mothers who have taken to the streets to demonstrate and who have been beaten up and arrested. For mothers, a child is everything. They want to know where their sons are, sons who have been sent to the front like cannon fodder and whose whereabouts are unknown because the authorities have no interest in telling them.
There are mothers who have hope, because their sons, captured by the Ukrainians, have been able to call, crying. They are still alive. There are other young soldiers who desert and run away. They don’t understand why they should die for this war.
On the other side is the courageous resistance of a free Ukrainian people who do not want to be enslaved by a foreign regime. For those who believe, or want to believe, the lie that the Russian army went to liberate a people in the hands of Nazis, it is enough to see how many Ukrainians from all over the world are leaving behind their belongings, their wellbeing, their wealth and comfort to return to their homeland to defend it from the invader.
It is enough to see how many elderly people, women, and unarmed Ukrainian civilians are pouring into the streets occupied by tanks sent from Moscow, shouting at the Russians to get out. These are glaring facts, hard evidence of the falsity of stories offering a contrary narrative. Here is a people, Ukraine, that wants to be free to decide its own future and will resist until the end.
This is why the Russian army is shooting at civilians and starving them, devastating everything, striking houses, hospitals, schools, churches: because Moscow knows that it can win battles, but cannot win a war against a people that wants freedom.
