Anyone who is looking for their son, husband or grandson in Russia and suspects they are in Ukraine can turn to Marina.

It's a pseudonym, because Marina belongs to the movement of the Soldier's Mothers of Russia, and her involvement has become dangerous.

Not just with the war, which in Russia has to be called a “special military operation”.

Last fall, new regulations took away from the hands of soldiers' mothers the methods they had used for decades to help soldiers, conscripts, and their families.

Activists can no longer record what has happened to those who contact one of the movement's many regional branches.

Such information is now considered a state secret.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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After the attack on Ukraine, criminal laws were enacted prohibiting "discrediting" or spreading "false news" about Russia's armed forces or foreign activities of other state agencies.

You can get a fine or up to 15 years in prison.

Several Russians are already in custody.

Many of Marina's comrades-in-arms have given up.

She feels she has to speak up.

She calls the war a tragedy and catastrophe for both the Ukrainians and the Russians.

Already in 2014, at the beginning of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the work of the soldiers' mothers was difficult.

At that time, Russia annexed Crimea, first covertly, with "little green men", who were only later referred to as soldiers.

It was different on the mainland.

In the Donbass industrial region, it was mainly volunteers who were initially deployed to drive the Ukrainian armed forces out of the separatist “people's republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

A dash in place of the place of death

But soon Moscow had to send soldiers, again undercover.

Even in the midst of the attack, many believed they were on maneuvers at home.

If they were then killed in Ukraine, a dash appeared in the records in place of the place where they died.

When President Vladimir Putin then prepared his new attack, the mothers of soldiers noticed changes early on.

"We have our finger on the pulse," says Marina.

Reservists were called up in the “People's Republics” last year.

The entities mobilized in February, just before Putin's "special operation" began.

Russian women who were looking for their sons and husbands soon called the mothers of the soldiers.

In Russian families, if at all, it is usually the women who take care of this;

this was already the case in the late Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, when the movement arose.

Anyone looking for help on the Internet now quickly comes across numbers for soldiers' mothers.

Marina says many families previously checked a Telegram channel set up by Ukraine.

It's called "Search yours".

You see pictures and names of Russians who died in Ukraine.

Some are so disfigured that Ukrainians warn against looking at the pictures.

Marina reports that in addition to the families, there were also calls from people who considered their work to be treason and provocateurs who wanted to make trouble for the activists.

"The army takes everything and everyone"

True, Kremlin propaganda portrays the “special operation” as part of an epic struggle with the West, which is at war with Russia and using Ukraine as a tool.

Like it was 1941 again when Nazi Germany attacked.

But officially you are not at war.

Although Putin praised the participants and ordered awards, Marina sees a cover-up at work – as in 2014. “The operation is official, but not official,” she says, “one does not call things by their proper name.” Rules for the “special operation” are missing .

But one thing is clear: not only “specially” trained people fought in Ukraine.

The army takes “everything and everyone”.