Better a heroic death than a traffic accident

RUssland’s president regularly praises death for the fatherland as a worthy goal in life. On Friday it was time again, but in a special context. At his Novo-Ogaryovo residence west of Moscow, Vladimir Putin received women whose sons, according to the Kremlin, are fighting in Putin’s “special operation” or have already died in Ukraine. The occasion was Mother’s Day this Sunday; the reason presumably to dispel any doubts the Russians may have about the meaning of the victims. “Personally, I and the entire leadership of the country: We share this pain,” was Putin’s message to the affected Russian families right at the beginning.

The Kremlin selected 17 women and placed them around an oval table. In front of everyone, including Putin, there was a pot of tea, a plate of pastries and a bowl on a long stem with several kinds of berries. As usual in such cases, the guests were carefully read out: Not invited were the traditional representatives of the families of soldiers and conscripts, the “Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers”, as well as a new association, the “Council of Mothers and Wives”. The latter had loudly demanded to be invited to Putin’s reception announced last Tuesday.

In vain. Instead, there were several women among the women who were even identified on a Kremlin list as representatives of organizations and authorities loyal to the system. One of the women, Nina Pschenichkina, works in a school library in the “people’s republic” of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which Putin recently annexed.

“In hindsight we are all wiser”

This mother’s testimony provided Putin with the template for his most memorable death praise. Pshenichkinas said her son Konstantin joined the Landsturm in 2014. That’s what the volunteer groups that were set up in Russia at the time, fighting for secession from Ukraine, were called. His mother said he fell “in one of the morning fights”: When “the enemy” approached the position, the son jumped out of the ditch, “dragged the fire, and his last words were: ‘Let’s go ‘Brothers, let’s chop down dilllings.’” The Russian word is ukrop, which is a Ukrainian swear word and also means dill.

A database of fighters who died for Donbass secession and annexation with Russia reveals that Konstantin Pshenichkin died not in Putin’s invasion from late February, but in April 2019. Now that wasn’t mentioned. However, with a view to 2014, Putin said that in hindsight “we are all wiser”: the areas in the Donbass should have been “reunited” with Russia earlier. That it has only happened now “is also thanks to your son,” said Putin.

In a soft voice, as if he were a priest, the President spoke of an “enormous tragedy, this emptiness that nothing can fill”. However, around 30,000 people die in traffic accidents in Russia every year, “about the same number from alcohol”. It doesn’t matter what faith you follow, Putin continued. “The important thing is that we are all mortal, all subject to the Lord. And at some point we will leave this world, it is inevitable. The question is how we lived,” Putin pointed out. “For some it’s unclear whether they’re alive or not, and it’s also unclear how they’re leaving, because of vodkas or something else, and then they left.” It’s not at all perceptible whether someone was alive or not. “But your son was alive, do you understand that?” he said to Pshenichkina. “His goal has been achieved. This means that he did not depart from life in vain. Do you understand? In that sense, of course, his life proved significant.” The son had achieved the goal he had striven for.