Delft's leaning tower

Another bright day in HOlland and temps are rising up to a mild 12°C ~ and in the background the drums of war in Urkaine sound heartbreaking and louder. 

I welcomed the news in the newspaper today ~ here in translation:
""We're not goddamn peacekeepers at all, as they say," another prisoner of war says, crying to his mother in Russia. "We're occupiers, Mom...it's a real nightmare."

"Don't cry, Mom, don't worry," said a captured Russian soldier through a cell phone held up to his sobbing mother in Russia. "Everything is fine with me. I'm a prisoner of war in Belarus, oh no, I mean in Ukraine... it's important that you pass on what we're doing here. What is happening here is beyond all limits. Our troops are bombing hospitals, kindergartens, maternity hospitals.”

Conscripts
Under Russian law, conscripted military personnel cannot be used in operations such as the current one in Ukraine. But although President Putin assures that only professional soldiers and kontraktniki (soldiers with short-term contracts) are taking part in the military operation, many prisoners of war say they were indeed drafted for conscription.

The video footage is part of a deliberate campaign by the Ukrainians to influence the mood among Russians. The Ukrainian authorities have also set up a site, Okkupant (Occupier), which lists the names of prisoners of war with a button next to it for family members to contact via email. Concerned parents from Russia can also call a special number for information about their sons from whom they have not heard a word as they're in Ukraine.

Under duress
The Russian Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, an activist group that has championed conscripted soldiers in Chechnya since the war, says it receives many calls from parents who have heard from their sons that they have been sent to Ukraine under duress or under false pretenses.

"Mothers say that their (conscript) sons are calling complaining that they are being forced to sign a contract," Olga Larkina, the head of the Soldier's Mothers Committee, told the independent Russian news site Meduza. "They took their military service book, put a stamp in it and Voila it is done; now it's kontraktniki."

Undoubtedly there are parents who are proud that their sons are participating in what Putin portrays as a heroic struggle against the neo-Nazis and fascists in Ukraine, but it seems that the messages from Ukraine and the phone calls from imprisoned soldiers are starting to stir unrest in Ukraine. Russia.

In Novokuznetsk, deep in Siberia, local governor Sergei Tsivilyov came under fire from concerned relatives of soldiers sent to Ukraine. They accused him that the authorities had misled the soldiers by pretending it was a military exercise.

cannon fodder
“They were sent as cannon fodder,” a woman recalls images given to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty of the meeting, which was held at the Omon riot police base in the city. Apparently it was arranged to reassure family members after reports came in that several soldiers of the unit had been killed in the fighting for the town of Butja, just north of Kyiv.

"Where's your son?" demanded another woman, as Tsivilyov tried to squeeze out, assuring that "no one lied to anyone." "He's in college," he admitted.

The governor declined to answer further questions from the public. “You can sit here screaming and blaming everyone, but I don't think we should jump to conclusions as long as there's a military operation going on. We should not criticize. Not until it ends, and it will soon be over.” “When everyone is dead?!” a woman yells."