LVIV, Ukraine—Indifference was what Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines found most painful, and indifference is what provokes their parents, struggling for their rights at home, to mount angry protests.

On a recent afternoon, a group of mothers and fathers blocked three streets around the regional administration building in Lviv, in a part of the country known for its fierce nationalism. They protested against the continuation of the ATO, or the Anti Terrorist Operation, as the war is known in Ukraine. A ceasefire was in effect, but the Ukrainian army was still fighting with pro-Russian separatist forces in the east.

A caravan of trams stuck in the middle of the medieval city waited in line for the protest to end. Pedestrians passed, paying no heed to the groups of relatives who held up signs that screamed for help to save the lives of soldiers in the east. Around the corner, flocks of tourists enjoyed the last warm rays of sun, the savoring hot chocolates and coffees on verandas under colorful autumn trees.

No officials came out to talk to the mothers who were terrified they’d never see their sons again. “The government’s priority is to win their elections, and ours is to get our boys home alive,” one of the protesting mothers complained to reporters. And those parliamentary elections, due on Sunday, seem oddly disconnected from the war, or at least from the people who are fighting it.

Thousands of Ukrainian families have suffered from a conflict that pumped young and healthy soldiers to the front lines in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The results of a parliamentary investigation published Monday raised even more outrage—the officials blamed a former defense minister, Valery Geletei, and Chief of the General Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Victor Muzhenko, for the tragedy of the August battle outside of Ilovaisk, where Russian soldiers and pro-Russian separatists killed and wounded about 1,000 Ukrainian troops.

Last Monday Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko saw dozens of Ukrainian National Guard troops marching toward his office in Kiev to demand demobilization. The soldiers refused to go back to their barracks, even under a threat of prosecution.