‘Maybe you’ll even come back’ Two Russian men recount how their own families tried to make them go to war
When journalist Irina Snegovskaya posted a poem on social media about a Russian mother telling her son to join a mercenary formation to pay off his debts, she meant for it to be satirical. But after someone left a comment arguing that such a thing had never happened, Russian men began responding with their own stories of being pressured by their mothers and wives to join the war in Ukraine. The RFE/RL news outlet Current Time, where Snegovskaya works, reached out to these commenters and asked them to recount their situations in detail. Meduza shares two of these men’s stories in English.
‘At least you’ll die like a man’
When Russia began its mobilization campaign in the fall of 2022, Sergey protested by putting up anti-war posters. He was soon arrested, and after his release, he decided that he and his wife and son, who was just over a year old at the time, needed to get out of the country.
“I didn’t say anything to my parents because they’re very pro-Putin, very patriotic,” he told Current Time. “But after I got our tickets and exchanged our money, [my mom] happened to find the receipt from the currency exchange where I’d swapped our rubles for dollars. And she started asking questions.”
According to Sergey, he told his mother that he and his wife had bought plane tickets out of Russia and would leave in two months. “We were actually planning to leave sooner, but I said ‘two months’ so that she couldn’t physically stop us,” he says. “She immediately started protesting: ‘Why don’t you want to go defend your country? You owe it!’”
Sergey says his mother’s desire for him to join the war wasn’t because she wanted money. “In fact, it was because she needed a reason to be proud of me. She’d always had issues with that.”
When Sergey tried not to engage with his mother’s questions, he says, she became “hysterical” and started berating him: “It’s your duty! You’re a man! Come on — you don’t even have a good job right now! You’ll make some money, you’ll be a hero, and your son will be proud of you!”
Sergey asked his mother if she understood that he would likely be killed if he went to war. He sums up her response like this: “At least you’ll die like a man. Everyone will be proud of you. And Misha, your son, will see you as a hero, and your wife will be the widow of a hero.”
At first, Sergey says, he didn’t take his mother’s words seriously. But then she asked his younger brother to go to the conscription office and alert them that Sergey planned to flee the draft.
“My brother sent me the screenshots where Mom wrote, ‘Go to the conscription office and turn him in so he doesn’t escape.’ She threatened me and my wife, saying she would take our son away,” he recounts. “After that, I started to realize she was serious.”
‘Everyone is going’
Grigory’s story is nearly identical to Sergey’s. His daughter was born shortly before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and when Vladimir Putin declared mobilization in September 2022, Grigory decided to leave the country. Both Grigory’s parents and his in-laws supported the war.
Grigory was in the supermarket with his wife, buying supplies for his journey out of Russia, when he first told his mom over the phone that he planned to leave. “I don’t remember the exact words [of her response], but the gist was this: ‘Grigory, why would you leave? That’s a felony! Why don’t you just go [to Ukraine], try it out, and who knows — maybe you’ll even come back.’”
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Hearing the words “Maybe you’ll even come back” from his mother shook him up, Grigory told Current Time. “I couldn’t believe it at first,” he says. “I said we had a bad connection and asked her to repeat what she’d said. Then I gave the phone to my wife, and my mother said the same thing to her.”
Grigory soon learned that his wife’s parents also wanted him to join the war. “My mother-in-law didn’t understand it, either: How could I leave my homeland and fail to defend it?” he says.
Every time he asked his mother whether she realized he would probably die if he went to war, Sergey says, she would “just stop responding”:
What could she say? That she wouldn’t be sorry to see her own son be killed for no reason? […] My wife also asked her: “Aren’t you worried for your child, that he could die for nothing?” My mother responded that “everyone is going” and that they should let me go, too, because I “might return.” […] The only thing she was thinking about was the social status it would supposedly bring. Based on her personality, I think she was just afraid of what people would say [if I didn’t go].
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Coming to terms
Both Sergey and Grigory managed to leave Russia and are living abroad. They told Current Time that they now keep their communications with their relatives in Russia to a minimum and that the main reason they call them at all is so that their children can talk to their grandparents.
“At first, it was hard. I think I had some depression from my conversations [with my mother],” Grigory said. “But now it’s been more than a year, and I’m feeling much better — in large part because I stopped talking to my parents so much.”
Sergey said his only communication with his mother is when he turns on the camera so that she can see her grandson. He still talks to his father, who supports the war but didn’t try to stop Sergey from leaving. “But not my mom: she’s blacklisted forever,” he said.
It was painful to learn that my mother wishes me dead just because I’m somehow “different.” It was pretty hard to come to terms with the fact that the person who carried me inside her, who washed my ass when I was little, can just say: “Go die.” But what am I losing by not seeing my mother? She didn’t have any kind of special motherly love for me. All I’m losing is the physical presence of a person who only yells at me, curses at me, and is always upset about something. And who spouted crazy fascist nonsense every day.
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