Canned meat, tea and medals: Russia thanks mothers for sending their children to war with grocery packs

“The head of the district should draw conclusions and not allow such indifference and actions that discredit the authorities,” the administration's press service told state-owned news agency TASS.

“This case is the very example of non-compliance with moral and ethical standards by local authorities. Perhaps the attempt to support the mothers was driven by positive motives, a desire to support the families, but this personal initiative of the head of the district achieved the opposite effect,” the Kursk authorities told the publication Podyem, calling the incident “a negligent attitude towards people who have suffered an irreparable loss.”

Canned meat, buckwheat, and tea

In Tatarstan, the mothers of the mobilized were also given presents on Mother's Day – towels, however, were not part of their gift sets. Each of the 112 women received rice, buckwheat, cheap tea, candy, condensed milk, wafers, canned meat and sprats. The journalists estimated that the cost of the set was a little over 1000 roubles ($16).