the families at the meeting with Putin were “carefully selected”

The families of the fallen soldiers, with whom, as the Kremlin reported earlier, Vladimir Putin celebrated Christmas in the church at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, were “carefully selected”, – the Agency publication asserts. According to the analysis, in total, Putin met with five families of those killed in the war in Ukraine, who were awarded state awards. Among them was the family of the abbot of the church at the Strategic Missile Forces, the pro-Vlastnye media called him “paratrooper father”. In addition, two widows of the victims who met Putin work in pro-government public organizations, and several children invited to Putin’s Christmas party have already met him on November 4, on National Unity Day.

Priest Mikhail Vasiliev died in November 2022 in the Kherson region. As a priest, he previously visited military conflicts in Chechnya and Syria, and during the mobilization for the war in Ukraine, he advised Russian women to give birth to more sons so that they would not be afraid of being sent to the front. Widow Vasilyeva and five children came to the meeting with Putin. The “Agency” with reference to the source claims that the family of the priest Vasiliev spent a quarantine in the “President Hotel” before the meeting.

As “Agentstvo” reports, Natalya Makhonina, the widow of Russian Guard Major Leonid Makhonin, was also present at the meeting with Putin. She is the head of the Committee of Families of Soldiers of the Fatherland in Balashikha and an adviser to the head of this suburb of Moscow. Ksenia Semenova, the widow of Major Dmitry Semenov, was among the participants of the Christmas meeting and the representative of the state fund “Defenders of the Fatherland”. She works as deputy head of the Tambov branch of the fund.

The American Institute for the Study of War, following the “Agency”, noted that this is not the first meeting of Putin with relatives of war participants, which was attended by “non-accidental people”. ISW connected the meeting with the election campaign that Putin is leading, noting that war veterans and their family members make up a significant number of voters, and their support is important for the Kremlin “to present the Russian population as the majority supporting the war in Ukraine.”