President Vladimir Putin on Friday met with more than a dozen mothers of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, telling those who had lost sons that he and the entire leadership shared their suffering.
The war in Ukraine has killed or wounded tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides, according to the United States and the Russian invasion has triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been sent to fight in Ukraine, including some of the more than 300 000 who were called up as part of a mobilisation announced by Putin in September.
Meeting with seventeen women at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow to mark Sunday’s Russian Mother’s Day, Putin was shown in a short, pre-recorded clip sitting with them around a table laden with tea, cakes and bowls of fresh berries.
Many smiled as Putin entered, Putin said he understood the anxiety and concern of soldiers’ mothers -and the pain of those who had lost sons in Ukraine.
Putin said, “I would like you to know that I personally and the whole leadership of the country, we share your pain. We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, especially for a mother.”
The mothers listened to what appeared to be Putin’s introductory remarks but their comments to him were not immediately shown.
Putin has said he has no regrets about launching what he calls Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine and casts the war as a watershed when Russia finally stood up to an arrogant Western hegemony after decades of humiliation in the years since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine and the West say Putin has no justification for what they cast as an imperial-style war of conquest. Ukraine says it will fight until the last Russian soldier is banished.
Putin urged the mothers to distrust the internet. “You can’t trust anything there at all, there are all sorts of fakes, deception, lies,” Putin said.
Putin said he sometimes called Russian soldiers at the front and that their words had made them heroes in his eyes. But some relatives of soldiers killed in the war said the Kremlin had ignored their pleas for a meeting.
The United States’ top general estimated on 9 November that Russia and Ukraine had each seen more than 100 000 of their soldiers killed or wounded. Ukraine does not disclose its losses.
