Putin Believes His Own Propaganda, And Russian Moms Protest

The war is still in its infancy, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warped historical claim that Ukraine is an artificial entity has been upended by Ukrainians fighting fiercely to save their homeland, which is older than Russia itself, Anshell Pfeffer reported for Haaretz.

Photo Insert: It has been reported that mothers and relatives of Russian conscripts are questioning the deployment of draftees to Ukraine given that none of them signed up nor were they aware they would be doing more than mere "drills."

The war between Russia and Ukraine may turn out to be a long and bitter affair between two countries with well-equipped armies, so it’s presumptuous to summarize after just three days of fighting.

But one thing that can be said almost for certain is that Putin had too much belief in his own propaganda, forgetting the truth that Ukrainians are not Russians and they have existed as a nation for more than 1,000. It was during the czarist period that Ukrainians were tagged as “Little Russians,” a description that Ukrainians detest.

As bodies pile up, planes are downs and tanks burn, Russia would not even admit its losses while Ukraine has been bombarding the internet and the airlanes with videos of charred Russian corpses and tanks that burn perfectly after being hit with US Javelin anti-tank missiles and UK rockets.

In Russia itself, CNN, Reuters, and Foreign Policy’s Liza Rozovsky reported that mothers and relatives of Russian conscripts are questioning the deployment of draftees to Ukraine.

Apparently, they were all told that they were going to join drills but ended up invading Ukraine. Russian law prohibits conscripts from being sent to the front unless they choose to sign a contract and become career soldiers. But in Ukraine, Rozovsky said, “there are a lot of draftees. None of them signed up.”

Maria, who lives in the Russian city of Tver, is beside herself with worry about her son, a soldier doing his compulsory service in the Russian army. She knows he’s 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Kharkiv, but not whether he’s in Ukraine or in Russia.

“I don’t know why my child is where a war is going on,” she says on the phone, in tears. “I can’t do anything except cry. I think about jumping from the eighth floor. I can’t work, live, eat or drink.”

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