On January 6, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the families of Russian army soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine.
Russian President-dictator Vladimir Putin On January 6, 2024, he held a meeting with family members of the Russian Armed Forces who were liquidated in Ukraine. All those present at the meeting with the dictator were carefully selected.
Analysts at the ISW Institute for the Study of War write about this.
Putin behaved like a so-called “merciful leader” on the eve of the Russian presidential elections, which will be held in March 2024.
It is noted that Vladimir Putin gathered family members of the liquidated occupiers at his residence in Novo-Ogarevo to celebrate Orthodox Christmas together. The head of the Kremlin assured that the Russian government would provide support to these families, but at the same time delegated responsibility for it to Russian officials at all levels throughout the country.
ISW analysts noted that the Russian leader recently attended similar events, during which he presented himself as a “merciful leader” who cares about the well-being of Russian military personnel, and also demonstrated his power to fulfill their requests and solve problems.
“Putin is likely to use these repeated, highly publicized meetings as part of his election campaign, since Russian military personnel and their families constitute a significant electorate, and their public support for Putin is vital to the Kremlin's ability to convey to the Russian population that largely supports the war,” explained ISW.
Analysts are convinced that the Kremlin carefully selected the families who attended the meeting with the dictator, likely to minimize the risk that they might say or ask inconvenient things. In addition, the Putin administration has shown “sensitivity” to recent public complaints from relatives of the occupiers and continues to make efforts to censor these complaints in the public domain.
The Russian opposition publication Novosti Agency reported on January 7 that the meeting was attended by relatives of five fallen Russian servicemen, but many of these people are themselves connected with the government and military leadership.
So, according to the agency, the event was attended by the widow of a former serviceman of the Russian Guard, who is the chairman of the Committee of Families of Soldiers of the Fatherland in Balashikha and an adviser to the head of the region. Also there was the widow of a serviceman of the Russian Armed Forces, who now works as the head of the Tambov branch of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation created by the Kremlin. In addition to them, sitting at the same table with Putin were members of the family of the former rector of the church at the headquarters of the Russian Special Forces Missile Forces, a “paratrooper priest” who had previously participated in Russian operations in Chechnya and Syria.
RosSMI stated that all five dead occupiers, whose families attended the meeting, posthumously received the Hero of Russia and Order of Courage awards, and two of their children also attended the event with Putin on November 4 in Moscow .
“However, the Kremlin's practice of carefully selecting those attending public events with Putin, and sometimes having the same people attend multiple events, appears to be standard. Putin on November 25, 2022, similarly misrepresented a meeting with 18 carefully selected women holding influential positions in the Russian political sphere as an open discussion with the mothers of the mobilized,” ISW recalled.
Let us recall that, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Kremlin has prepared another large-scale special operation against Ukraine – what we are talking about.
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