The women of Voronezh are very busy these days. Across the Russian city, aunties are busy sewing boots and winter clothing. Relatives are busy crowdfunding for night goggles and drones. Wives are busy demonstrating outside military bases. Mothers are busy making preparations to travel 150 miles southwest where they will cross the border into Ukraine to find and bring home the broken bodies of their abandoned sons.
The wives and mothers of Voronezh are not alone in their efforts, or in their demands that the authorities return their underequipped and undertrained men. In neighbouring Kursk region, relatives of mobiks (men called up for mobilisation to Ukraine in September) staged a protest on the Russian–Ukrainian border. In Dagestan, women played a key role in the demonstrations that followed Vladimir Putin’s call for mobilisation. The protest only died down after the local governor promised that men without military experience would not be drafted.
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