Outside an army recruitment center in St. Petersburg, women and children hug Russian men drafted to fight in Ukraine and whisper to each other where their loved ones are to be sent.
Some at the farewell hope their husbands, sons or fathers will not be deployed on the frontlines of the Kremlin’s seven-month “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“It’s just military drills, right?” a woman in her sixties asks a relative next to her.
All around them, women share a final kiss, hold hands, or exchange a final word with departing men through a metal barrier that separates the reservists from the street.
“I think so, yes – military exercises. I don’t know,” answered 55-year-old Svetlana Antonova, hoping to reassure the woman.
“I think they will be taken to a training camp. I dont know. Nobody knows. I think they will be at the back.”
Her 27-year-old son presented himself at the military service center on Tuesday, less than a week after President Vladimir Putin called up hundreds of thousands of reservists for Ukraine.
The call sparked demonstrations in Moscow and a migration of men abroad.
At the army center in southern Saint Petersburg, AFP journalists saw men between the ages of 20 and 40.
Nikita, a 25-year-old reservist, held hands through the cordon with his 22-year-old fiancé, Alina. She had tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m shocked,” Alina said without taking her eyes off her fiancé.
Nikita smoothed her hair through the metal bars.
He said he was “not surprised” to receive the subpoena last Saturday, but that his relatives were.
“Well, if you have to go, you have to go,” he said.
– ‘No way out’ –
For Galina, 65, and her family, her son-in-law’s draft was a particularly hard blow because her daughter is being treated for cancer.
As the 42-year-old has moved in and her daughter is undergoing chemotherapy, Galina will be the main carer for the couple’s 12-year-old son.
She took her grandson Misha to say goodbye to his father, a construction worker who was previously in the army.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do this,” she said, holding Misha’s hand.
“How long they take them or where, we don’t know.”
Galina said some families had been told the men were being taken to a training ground in the area.
She added that the family had no thought of escaping the mobilization, like tens of thousands of Russians who left the country in a hurry.
“We had nowhere to walk,” she told AFP news agency.
