Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will meet with the mothers of troops drafted into his calamitous invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin said, in an event which critics have dismissed as a whitewash. “On the eve of Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in Russia on the last Sunday of November, Vladimir Putin will meet with the mothers of servicemen participating in the special military operation,” the Kremlin said in a statement, adding that the mothers of both professional soldiers and drafted reservists would be present. Advocates for troops’ families have slammed the meeting as a stage-managed cover-up which will use hand-picked mothers to hide the disregard the Kremlin has shown for the lives of its soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Valentina Melnikova, an advocate with the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, told the Guardian this week that the group had not been invited to the meeting. “To go together with the relatives of mobilized [soldiers] who are agreed to their husbands and sons dying on the front is not comfortable for us,” she said. “We have somewhat different interests and different problems.”