It’s a simple chat of residents of a small town in the Moscow region – a few dozen people, mostly women, who are used to chatting on WhatsApp messaging. Usually, we discuss everything and nothing, the state of the vegetable gardens, the nuisance caused by stray dogs, the jams we want to exchange, the price of communal services.
Above all, no politics: a question of good manners, in a Russia where the subject is confined, at best, to the kitchens, and where public debate is a terrain perceived as not only dangerous, but also repugnant, plagued by corruption and violence.
Barely a few minutes after Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation on Wednesday, September 21, this elementary rule of prudence and politeness has been forgotten. First, a simple link to an information site is published: “Vladimir Putin signed the ukase ordering partial mobilization for Ukraine. » A woman launches, the first. With the only weapon of irony tinged with bitterness: “How is mobilization? While there is not even the war! Or is it like with the pandemic, one day yes, one day no? And we pay every day…”
The floodgates are open, a flood of emotions and concerns is suddenly pouring out:
“You don’t read the news? Everything was planned yesterday. Refusing mobilization is now a criminal offence.
– I still prefer doing jail, at least you have a chance of surviving.
– Especially since they have just emptied the prisons to send the prisoners to fight…”
“Stop spreading panic”
The Russians are said to be ill-informed; but the use of detainees, carefully concealed, is only an open secret. They are said to be apathetic; up to a certain point, where they are not directly concerned, or even threatened. This is all the political risk underlying the mobilization, even ” partial “decreed by Vladimir Putin.
“You know, I don’t agree. Why should our men go to defend the homes and lands of those who abandoned them? Husbands and sons, kids who haven’t seen anything of life yet, are going to die because the politicians have decided it.
– Defend against whom? Someone attacked us? Someone threatens us? Let me laugh.
– Laugh but it is also our land, Ukraine! If we had been less weak eight years ago, we would have already destroyed all this vermin.
– This is all going to go on forever. With these people who govern us, those whom we have no right to criticize…
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