Watch: Russian troops hand out flowers in occupied Ukraine on International Women’s Day

Masked Russian soldiers handed out flowers and performed a conflict-inspired “festive concert” to mark International Women’s Day in occupied Ukraine.

Footage shared on social media by Russia’s defence ministry showed soldiers in military fatigues and scarves pulled over their faces distributing flowers to female workers in Mariupol.

In the video, two fighters in combat uniform entered a medical facility bearing burgundy paper gift bags and red flowers.

The men, who are both sapper engineers, presented a bouquet of flowers and a gift bag to a woman in a doctor’s gown before awarding the same gifts to two more women in the Ukrainian port city that was captured by Russian forces at the start of the war.

Fighters in army uniform, wearing bulletproof vests and with camouflage painted on their faces also staged a conflict-inspired “festive concert” routine for women at a local school, the video showed.

Intense Russian bombardment of Mariupol destroyed the city and killed tens of thousands of civilians in 2022.

Elsewhere, in Moscow, masked riot police handed out flowers to women in the city centre.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, also hailed women soldiers fighting on the front line and supporting his country’s armed forces, stating: “I would like to especially address the women who are in the zone of the special military operation, performing combat tasks.”

Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, thanked the mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have raised true patriots and valiant defenders of the Fatherland,” he said.

Women-led protests

The Kremlin charm offensive comes amid a growing wave of Russian women protesting at their husbands and sons being called up to fight in Ukraine.

Every week, wives and mothers of mobiled Russian soldiers lay down red carnations at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, one of Moscow’s best known monuments.

The movement, called The Way Home, has gathered 65,000 followers on Telegram with about 20 women regularly turning up to their protests in Moscow.

At one protest last month outside the Kremlin to mark 500 days since Russia’s mobilisation was declared, at least 27 people were detained – most of them journalists covering the event OVD-Info, a human rights group, reported.