Officials belonging to Vladimir Putin’s political party have been found gifting meat grinders to the mothers of fallen soldiers in Ukraine.
According to The Moscow Times, officials from the United Russia party have visited the homes of grieving mothers and presented them with meat grinders.
The report explains:
The ruling United Russia party in Russia’s northern Murmansk region has sparked controversy after gifting meat grinders to the mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine.
The kitchen appliance has become a grim symbol of the Russian military’s high-casualty assaults in the Ukraine war. The Wagner mercenary group had previously awarded “Bakhmut Meat Grinder” medals to its fighters.
United Russia’s local chapter in the town of Polyarnye Zori included meat grinders in gift packages to mothers whose sons died in the war, according to photos published on the party’s social media account Wednesday.
However, United Russia’s Murmansk chapter pushed back against the widespread criticism of their choice as gifts, calling the attacks “inhumane and provocative” and suggesting the mothers had requested the meat grinders as gifts.
“The meat grinder was not part of the standard gift set, but one woman asked for it, and of course [party members] could not refuse her,” said Mayor Maxim Chengayev.
The party later released a video of one of the mothers thanking officials for the gift.
“I wanted to buy it for myself, but you gifted me one just in time,” the woman said on camera. “I asked you for it, in principle.”
The reports come as President Trump pushes both Ukraine and Russia to go to the negotiating table with a view to try and bring about a long and lasting peace to the troubled region.
The term “meat grinder” has come to define the brutal, high-casualty battles of the Russia-Ukraine war, particularly in Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
The result is a slow, grinding war of attrition, with massive losses on both sides and minimal territorial gains more reminiscent of trench warfare than modern combat.
According to a recent analysis by the BBC, at least 95,000 Russians have lost their lives since the war broke out in February 2022, while hundreds of thousands have been wounded.
However, these figures are only estimates, and the actual number could be much higher.
