In Moscow, wives of soldiers stage protest outside Kremlin

Partners of Russian men mobilised to fight in Ukraine demand that their husbands return from the front by staging one-person pickets outside the country's defence ministry and by placing flowers by the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Kremlin's walls.

Anger has been growing for months among those close to the reservists mobilised on President Vladimir Putin's orders in September 2022, a sensitive subject for the authorities who have until now been careful not to repress this emerging protest movement.

"We should not pretend that these people are not dying there - they are dying there," Maria Andreeva, a 34-year-old pediatrician, says.