Last Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in Novo-Ogaryovo with the mothers of combatants in Ukraine. The event was timed to coincide with Mother's Day, which is celebrated in Russia on the last Sunday of November. At this meeting, the President of the Russian Federation made several important political points.
Mothers of Servicemen and Volunteers
As reported by the media, Putin held a meeting with the mothers of military servicemen, but this was not entirely true. For example, the meeting was attended by Nelli Pshenichkina from Luhansk Region, whose son went to the front as a volunteer and died fighting with the Ukrainian Armed Forces back in 2014. The meeting with the Russian president was also attended by Maria Kostyuk from the Jewish Autonomous Region, whose son was killed in Ukraine in August this year.
Putin noted that he shares the pain of those women whose children were killed in the combat zone, and also promised that they would not feel forgotten.
“I want you to know that I personally and the entire leadership of the country share this pain. We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child. Especially for the mother, to whom we all owe the birth, who nurtured him,” said the President.
“I want you to know that we share this pain with you and, of course, we will do everything in our power not to let you feel forgotten. We will do everything that depends on us, so that you feel support,” said Putin.
In addition, the Russian President said that he sometimes speaks personally by telephone with servicemen in the zone of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“I talk to them sometimes, on the phone with some of the guys directly. Anyway, I talked to some who even surprised me with their mood and their attitude. They didn't expect these calls from me. By the way, these calls were also through their moms. That gives me every reason to say that they are heroes. This is true,” Putin said.
Untold Stories
Nina Pshenichkina, from the city of Kirovsk in Luhansk region, told us that locals perceived the September 30 accession ceremony of the new regions to the Russian Federation as a celebration because it was the reunification with Russia that the militia of the first wave in Donbass (spring and summer of 2014, when the DPR and LPR militia repelled the first attacks by the AFU and national battalions – ed.note by wek.ru) dreamt of.
Pshenichkina told how her son Konstantin, who with the words “Let's go, brothers, to kill Ukies” called the fire on himself and died. According to his mother, Konstantin Pshenichkin was posthumously awarded the medal For Valor.
Pshenichkin went on to ask not for herself, but for all those wounded on the battlefield. She complained that excessive bureaucracy prevailed in Luhansk Region with the examination of the wounded, when “there is so much to go through and collect certificates that even a healthy person would not collect.” In this regard, Pshenichkina asked Putin to organize examination of the wounded in a “one-stop-shop.”
Pshenichkina also asked a very important question: can the benefits that Russian servicemen have be extended to the volunteers who died before September 30, 2014?
In response, Putin did not give any specifics, only said that he discussed this issue with the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. As a result of the meeting, he plans to make specific instructions. “We will work on it,” Putin said.
It should be said that history shows that the status of volunteers is traditionally solved very difficult. For example, Putin signed a decree that the Dagestan militiamen, who heroically repelled the attack of the gang of Basayev and Khattab in August-September 1999, could receive the status of veterans and disabled combatants only in August 2019.
Husband and two sons of Irina Sumynina from Krasnodar are fighting in Ukraine. “My husband and two sons are now on combat duty, so to speak. They were not mobilized and went as volunteers. Again, they went from the army as Cossacks,” said Sumynina.
In her turn, Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Jewish Autonomous Area Maria Kostyuk told that her son, Senior Lieutenant Andrei Kovtun died in Donbass in August this year. Kostyuk urged to solve such a problem, when a 25-year-old widow of a soldier who died in the course of the special military operation comes to the military enlistment office and faces the indifference of officials, who simply send her away. In addition, Maria Kostyuk urged to start perpetuating the memory of the participants of the special military operation.
“Today we need to organize memorial places, some public gardens, places of memory, to name art objects in honor of our heroes, to build parks,” said Kostyuk.
Irina Tas-ool from Tyva talked about such an issue as employment assistance for combatants deemed unfit for military service after being wounded. Since this was the second time that the topic of employment and rehabilitation of disabled veterans was raised, Putin supported the idea of employing those discharged from military service in military registration and enlistment offices.
Some mothers thanked the leadership of their regions. It might even be said that Zharadat Agueva from Chechnya went too far in extending her thanks to Ramzan Kadyrov. Although, to be fair, it must be said that many experts and the media cite the military units from Chechnya as an example of how regional authorities should provide ammunition for their countrymen who take part in the special military operation.
Is Novorossiya coming back?
At the meeting with the mothers of servicemen and volunteers, Putin demonstrated that he keeps his finger on the pulse and is ready to promptly solve the urgent problems that concern the families of the participants of the special military operation.
However, apart from the discussion of problems, the meeting with the mothers was interesting in the fact that Putin made several important political points.
Many media outlets have spread Putin's words that Donbass and parts of the southeast could have been annexed earlier. First and foremost, however, it is worth noting that Putin brought such a concept as Novorossiya back into the political lexicon.
Saying in his opening remarks that “everything comes from the family,” Putin noted that participants of the special military operation protect “our people” in Novorossiya and Donbass.
“The fact that your guys – most of them – have chosen such a destiny as serving the Fatherland, defending the Motherland, Russia, defending our people, in this case in Novorossiya, in Donbass, is also the result of your work, without any doubt. This is not the result of some precepts and moral teachings. It is the result of personal example. This is always the case,” said the President.
Indeed, in 2014, the idea of proclaiming Novorossiya as a confederation of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions was loudly heard. For several years, the media even presented former Verkhovna Rada deputy and former presidential candidate Oleg Tsarev as the “speaker of the Novorossiya parliament.” To be fair, it would have been nice for the speaker to also elect a parliament, but it never came to that. But after the Kremlin put Vladislav Surkov in charge of Ukraine, the topic of Novorossiya was dropped.
It has Never Happened Before
Putin's admission that the accession of Donbass to Russia “should have happened earlier” has become the bombshell. The Russian President said this during a dialogue with Nina Pshenichkina.
“First of all, as for 2014, of course, we were thinking in hindsight that maybe we would reach an agreement and Luhansk and Donetsk would be able to reunite with Ukraine within the framework of the Minsk agreements, which you probably know about. We were sincerely going for it,” said Putin. “But we did not feel the mood of the people to the end, and it was impossible to understand to the end what was going on there.”
However, now the Kremlin understands that “this reunification should have happened earlier.” Perhaps then there would not have been so many casualties. “But now, perhaps, it has become obvious that this reunification should have happened earlier. Maybe there wouldn't have been so many civilian casualties either, there wouldn't have been so many children killed by shelling and so on,” said Putin.
Meanwhile, if the Kremlin had decided on the “Donbass scenario” in 2014, there would not have been so many casualties.
We would not have had to storm Mariupol, because in May 2014, armed DPR units had already occupied the outskirts of the city, and the nationalists fled in fear. But a command came from Moscow to surrender Mariupol, followed by a bloody mop-up by units of the AFU and Azov Regiment (a terrorist organization banned in Russia). Could it be because Mariupol is extremely important to official Kiev? Two of the largest factories, Ilyich and Azovstal, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, are located there. We would not have had to storm the fortifications in Donbass for nine months, starting with the announcement of the special military operation in February, with no end in sight to this assault. Finally, in the seven years since the Minsk agreements, the U.S. and NATO countries have rearmed and trained the Ukrainian army, preparing it for war against Russia.
Notably, the day after Putin's meeting with the mothers of servicemen and volunteers, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the Minsk agreements had helped Ukraine to rearm. Merkel herself was not at all confused by the fact that she had previously called the Minsk agreements a peace plan for Ukraine and acted as a guarantor of the implementation of these agreements.
In February 2015, Germany, France and Russia acted as guarantors of the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Merkel signed on behalf of Germany, then French President Francois Hollande signed on behalf of France, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed on behalf of Russia.
As a result, in seven years of this “respite,” NATO came to the borders of Ukraine, posing a direct threat to Russia's security.
On the whole, Vladimir Putin's meeting with the mothers of participants in the hostilities in Ukraine was a bright newsbreak, which was covered by both Russian and foreign media. At the same time, the news coverage again revealed a number of flaws in the media work.
For example, a search on YouTube produces exclusively propagandistic interpretations of Putin's meeting with the mothers of servicemen and volunteers. Not to mention the fact that many of the stories are blatant fakes that have nothing to do with the actual event.
Video fragments, manipulative headlines, comments by biased commentators like the town madman Andrei Piontkovsky, who left Russia and declared himself a political scientist. It can be seen everywhere that the manipulators are using the same techniques and working on the same thesis tentatively titled
“Putin's double met with fake mothers.” Everything is the same, just like a carbon-copy, and looks like some kind of political schizophrenia. And it is a huge problem when a wide audience cannot get adequate information about what is going on.