Vladimir Putin, 70, used Women’s Day to bestow government orders on women. A number of them are part of the war in Ukraine.
March 8th is a big day in Russia, and it’s in the Kremlin’s Ekaterina Hall The chief granted official orders to about twenty women.
– Putin wants women to be part of the war propaganda, says Inna Sangadjieva of the Helsinki Committee.
Many women are directly involved in the war on the Russian side, while others live in the annexed regions of Ukraine.
- According to Putin, the military nurse, Christina Kim, “acted with exceptional dedication to save wounded soldiers and civilians.” High-ranking officer Tatyana Chuchenko was also awarded with a state order.
- According to the same chief, the war correspondent Vlada Lugovskaya showed “amazing courage.” Putin particularly praised women working as war journalists.
- Putin also praised women working in high-tech industries that boost defense capabilities.
- The President gave special honors to female doctors in the annexed regions of Ukraine and orders to Ludmila Beletskaya, chief physician in the Luhansk region and Anna Zheleznaga, deputy head of the maternity/children’s department in Donetsk. The Minister of Education of the Russian Luhansk Administration, Yelena Sgaburova, was also honored.
- Putin also brought back an old honor from the Soviet era – “Mother Heroine”, and it was awarded to two women: Olga Strelnikova, mother of 11, and Albina Khajdarshina, mother of 13.
Inna Sangadjieva is the Head of Department of the Helsinki Committee and is Russian. This is how you look at the commemoration of Putin on March 8:
– He wants to normalize war in the lives of Russians. With this mention, Putin is showing that women should also be part of the war propaganda.
Sangadzhieva says that March 8 is celebrated more often in Russia than in Norway, but this women’s day has nothing to do with rights.
It’s primarily symbolic. And it is through these state orders that Putin extracts nostalgia for the Soviet Union, among other things by reintroducing the “Mother Heroine”. He wants women to bear children in war.
How is Putin’s relationship with women?
I feel he doesn’t respect women very much. With the commemoration of March 8, he will show that he is there for women, but in my opinion Putin has a bad view of women. Looks down on women a lot. Sanjadjieva says he is just pretending to care.
– He constantly talks about the traditional role of women and the role of women in the Russian state. At the same time, Putin points to what he believes are negative developments in the role of women and the family in Western countries.
Inna Sangadzhieva notes that Putin has had several times a problem in his relationship with women – wives and mothers from the Kursk accident, mothers from the Beslan terror, and most recently meeting with women behind massed soldiers before Christmas 2022. This meeting was previously described as a hoax.
One year ago, on March 8, 2022, Putin promised that there would be no mobilization. However, it was the fall of 2022, and many women reacted strongly to the fact that their beloved sons, husbands, and brothers had been sent to war without much preparation.
Other women honored on Wednesday included a high-ranking policewoman and one of the managers of writer Lev Tolstoy’s Gasnaya Polyana estate.
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