Wives of Russian soldiers deployed to Ukraine are threatening to go to the front lines to bring their husbands home after a military operation resulted in multiple casualties.
Verstka, an independent news agency in Russia, reported more than 20 relatives of soldiers traveled to Valuyki in Russia's Belgorod region, about 15 miles from the Ukraine border, and demanded the soldiers be taken from the front line to the rear.
In a video published on Verstka's Telegram channel, a woman speaking in Russian can be heard telling military officials to return their husbands or they'll "tear them apart," according to Newsweek.
The relatives, from Russia's Voronezh, Kursk and Belgorod regions, said the men had come under attack in Makiivka, a city in Ukraine's Donetsk region. They said many were wounded. The women asked Russian military officers to bring the soldiers home by car, threatening to go to Ukraine to bring them home themselves if the military refused to help.
It's among a number of reports in recent days of soldiers' relatives expressing anger at the Russian military.
In a video posted on Twitter by user Dmitri of WarTranslated, an independent project that translates materials about the war in Ukraine into English, soldiers' wives and relatives demanded answers from a city administrator following Russia's retreat from the city of Kherson in Ukraine.
Also, Latvia-based Russian-language news outlet Meduza reported Thursday that relatives from the Vologda and Vladimir regions appealed to authorities to return recently conscripted men deployed to Svatove in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, which has seen fierce fighting recently. The relatives claimed the soldiers were deployed with little to no training.
"For three days they were under shelling. They tried to survive the best they could. ... They had no food and no sleep. They held up for three days and didn't flee, unlike their commanding officers," Inna Popova, the wife of a soldier, said in a video address recorded by the soldiers' family members that was posted by Verstka and reported by The Washington Post.
"Please help us rescue our mobilized [men] and remove them from the first line of defense," Popova said, adding her husband was mobilized Oct. 12 and sent to Ukraine soon after.
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