Many women had made themselves heard in recent weeks in the face of the death of their sons as well as the incessant departures from war. This is why the Russian president had decided to grant them a meeting in order to share their pain and give them his support.
But this meeting, intended to be touching and sincere, was in fact nothing more than a staging.
With the help in particular of the military historian, President of the Action Resilience Institute as well as a lawyer at the Marseille bar, it was possible to recognize many of the women present with Vladimir Poutine this Friday.
Indeed, Cedric Mas establishes many links on his Twitter account, which many activists as well as media such as the New York Times have also noted.
The real mothers not invited
Olga Tsukanova, leader of the Council of Mothers and Wives, a large grassroots organization of parents of Russian servicemen, said in a press release on Friday that none of the organization’s mothers had been invited, although those they asked for a hearing.
“Who is our president? Is he a man or something else, who runs away from women by hiding behind the special services”, she was annoyed. She also admitted that she and some members of the group were being watched.
Recurring actresses
Some of the “mothers” are even faces that keep coming back during Vladimir Putin’s “publicity stunts.”
This is the case of Nadeszhda Uzunova, president of a pro-Kremlin and pro-war association called the Brotherhood of Fighters financed by the Kremlin, who was present during the meeting. But the latter is not his first attempt: we might see him behind the Russian president during the celebrations which followed the annexation of Ukrainian territories by Russia.
#Russia First, some of the mothers/wives look furiously like actresses (some already employed in others in other regime propaganda events).
I let you be the judge of the similarities but it still makes you a little suspicious. 3/ https://t.co/3H6kkFgYiO— Cedric Mas (@CedricMas) November 26, 2022
Fake mothers, real politicians
Other Russian “mothers” have been identified as more political profiles, including in particular an elected official from Moscow, Olga Belsteva. She is a member of the same party as Vladimir Putin, called “United Russia”.
Seated to the right of the Russian president, there is also the presence of a relative of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin.
We also see Yulia Belekhova, former candidate for the Duma in the party of the Russian president.
Fake wires?
A woman among the guests shows the audience a portrait of her son, explaining that the latter sacrificed himself heroically once morest the “ukronazis”. But, as Cédric Mas demonstrates, the soldier in question is in fact a member of a separatist militia who died in 2019, in a hospital in Luhansk. These facts directly contradict the account of the woman who claims that her son died on the front line.
#Russia Except that the killed soldier in question died in 2019. A member of a separatist militia, he died of his injuries in a hospital in Luhansk.
This is not very compatible with the story of his heroic death on the front lines. 5/ pic.twitter.com/RhUyJRfTs3— Cedric Mas (@CedricMas) November 26, 2022
