More than a year after President Vladimir Putin summoned 300,000 draftees to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, some of their families are starting to demand that they come home.

Wives, mothers and girlfriends of mobilized Russian soldiers have begun protests calling on the Kremlin to bring their men back from the war. Their movement, “The Way Home,” has gained more than 37,000 followers on its Telegram channel in support of calls for demobilization of the troops called up in September last year.

So far, the authorities have limited their response to sending police to warn organizers against protesting. While the number involved now is relatively small, the movement risks embarrassing the Kremlin as Putin prepares for presidential elections in March. Officials claim overwhelming public support for the invasion of Ukraine that’s lasted almost two years with no end in sight.

“We are in favor of complete demobilization, not rotation. We don’t want anyone to go through what we went through,” said Maria, 26, from Moscow, an activist whose boyfriend was among the first to be drafted. “I personally want the military operation to end. How can you feel good about the fact that people die every day, that someone’s body gets eaten by rats in the fields?”

Maria asked not to disclose her surname or identify her boyfriend, fearing official retaliation. She said she had expected the army to send him home from Ukraine after six months and then after a year, until “the full realization came that authorities are not going to bring our men back to us.”

Mobilization is a sensitive question for the Kremlin. Putin’s decision to order the partial call-up caused a spike in anxiety among Russians over the war and triggered an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people who fled the country to avoid the draft.

The Kremlin has denied suggestions of a second wave of mobilization. Putin, who said 617,000 Russian troops were deployed in Ukraine, acknowledged at his marathon news conference last week that public concern over a new draft was a “burning issue,” while insisting there’s no need for one now.

While surveys by the Moscow-based Levada Center show about three-quarters of Russians say they support the invasion, some 60% also worry the war may lead to a general mobilization. A majority say they favor peace negotiations to end the conflict.

The late Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin promised freedom to thousands of prisoners recruited from Russian jails if they survived six months at the front in Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry set no time limit for the mobilized soldiers.

“Russia’s military elite is against demobilization,” and it’s significant that Putin announced his re-election run at a meeting with people whose children died in the war, said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik, a political consultant. The Kremlin wants regional governors to “extinguish” the women’s protests to stop them gaining support, she said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to requests to comment.

Members of the protest movement published a video manifesto this month denouncing mobilization as “legalized slavery” and demanding a maximum one-year limit on military service before draftees are returned home. They questioned whether mobilized soldiers were “in the combat zone voluntarily.”

Organizers wear white headscarves, a tribute to the mothers’ movement in Argentina that campaigned for the return of their disappeared children in the military dictatorship’s “Dirty War” of 1976-1983 against domestic opponents.

Participants have taken their case to lawmakers in the State Duma and officials in the presidential administration without success.

About 30 women protested on Moscow’s central Theater Square on Nov. 7, urging the authorities to “let the mobilized go home.” Police quickly surrounded the group and told them to leave.

Supporters of “The Way Home” also laid flowers at the Eternal Flame, the monument to the World War II dead outside the Kremlin walls, to draw attention to mobilized soldiers who’d been killed, when Russia marked the patriotic Day of Heroes of the Fatherland holiday on Dec. 9.

Drafted soldiers want to leave the war but many have “lost hope,” said Maria. “At the same time, murderers, rapists, cannibals, who are released from prison, return home after six months. I feel like I’m living in a dystopia.”

With assistance from Gina Turner.

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