mobilization briefs
December 3, 2022

Mobilization in Russia for December 1–2, CIT volunteer summary

In Crimea, staff of the draft offices is preparing for the next wave of mobilization, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In the city of Kerch, there are allegedly check-ups of the data of persons liable for military service and working at state enterprises. Earlier, the Ukrainian General Staff stated that the Russian authorities are preparing for a new wave of covert mobilization starting from December 10 this year.

Regions introduce fines for non-compliance with decisions of operational headquarters established in connection with the adoption of martial law. The authorities of Chuvashia [constituent republic of Russia] prepared a draft law on the introduction of fines for non-execution or violation of the decision of the operational headquarters, created within the framework of the Presidential Decree on the imposition of the response regime in connection with combat activities. In the Samara region, the Gubernskaya Duma [regional assembly] submitted a similar bill to introduce fines of 3000 to 5000 rubles for citizens and up to 1 million rubles for legal entities.

In October, 12,797 questions concerning mobilization were sent to President Vladimir Putin, reported the Vedomosti newspaper, citing statistics on the appeals by the Presidential Directorate for Correspondence from Citizens and Organizations.

Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, visited a defense line where protective constructions are actively being deployed. There he talked, among other people, with mobilized Moscow residents. It is not reported what region the mayor visited.

In Kondopoga (Republic of Karelia, constituent republic of Russia), a military commissariat distributes draft notices to apartments and leaves them in doors and mailboxes. It is stated in the notices that it is necessary to come to "verify the data of the military registration." A citizen of Belarus is being drafted in Chelyabinsk during the mobilization of the employees of a local sugar refinery, which we mentioned before. Alyaksandr Arlukevich works at the sugar refinery, but he has never been a Russian citizen and has no residence permit. A brigadier at the workplace handed him a notice to appear at the enlistment office to be sent to the assembly point. Alyaksandr did not appear. The enlistment office informed that it intended to send him to the troops by force. In his turn, Arlukevich is going to complain against the mobilization decision in court. In accordance with the Presidential Decree on "partial" mobilization, only citizens of the Russian Federation are subject to the draft. Foreigners have the right only to voluntarily sign a contract for military service.

“We came under fire from our own artillery. Our own Grads fired at our trenches," Mikhail Nosov from the Primorsky region, released from the basement in so-called DPR, told the Mozhem Ob’yasnit [We Can Explain] Telegram channel. His fellow soldiers, according to him, still remain in the basements. In a statement to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Nosov demands that the officers be held criminally liable for abuse of power, kidnapping, imprisonment and illegal detention of him and his fellow soldiers in the basement.

A basement for refuseniks in Zaitseve, Luhansk region, was probably dispersed after publications in the media. It is unknown whether the Russian mobilized are there at the moment. “They were just moved to another basement. I don't know which one yet. Last night. No contact with them so far,” a relative of a mobilized person from the Voronezh region told the ASTRA Telegram channel. So far, ASTRA has identified 12 basements and other places where Russian soldiers who refused to fight were being held.

Another group of mobilized soldiers from Russia was abandoned near Lugansk. As the wife of one of the mobilized told the Mozhem Ob’yasnit Telegram channel, they were thrown to the front line under incessant shelling. Then the men left the battlefield and were de facto blocked in the village of Baranykivka near Luhansk, from where the mobilized from Serpukhov had already recorded their appeal. Another group of mobilized soldiers is assigned to a military unit in Boguchar, Voronezh region. They sit in houses abandoned by local residents without food or electricity, and the command, according to relatives, is going to send them to the front line. The mobilized took part in the fighting near Svatove.

The Defense Ministry won't inform the family of a drafted Moscow resident of his whereabouts. 44-year-old Yuryi Kotykhov was drafted by the draft office of Zelenograd on October 4. His family lost all communication with him on November 13 and since then has started looking for him. The draftee's brother contacted the Ministry's hotline, where he was told that his next of kin is serving his country. Then he contacted the Military Prosecutor's Office to find out which army unit his brother belongs to and in what capacity. He also wanted to know whether Yury was shipped off to Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry is showing how conscripts in Buryatia practice their firearms handling skills and newly drafted marines in the Kaliningrad region go through a psychological obstacle course. Draftees also improve their engineering and de-mining abilities, and tank crews and riflemen go through their combined arms training.

Locals in Tver are afraid to go outside because of drunk draftees. A resident from one of the suburbs employed social media to call on the local authorities to close down a vodka bar. He said local drunkards regularly get into drunken brawls next to it, and now draftees are joining them. Note that back in October Tver's authorities banned alcohol sales within 500 m from draft offices.

Supporting draftees shouldn't be excessive or forceful, said the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Ural Federal District Vladimir Yakushev when he met with volunteer fighters from the Sverdlovsk region. Meanwhile mothers of the Moscow region draftees make their own stretchers and camouflage netting for their sons. In the city of Kudymkar, Komi-Permyak region, locals collect funds to purchase sleeping bags for their draftees. In Minusinsk (Krasnoyarsk region), the acting  mayor ordered funds to be allocated for the families of the new draftees to purchase coal. Volunteers in Gorno-Altaysk helped a draftee's family to relocate a pile of coal. In Novosibirsk, a local educational facility will provide financial assistance to the drafted students and staff. High school students from the Kursk region took part in the regional "Happy New Year card for a soldier" event. Priozersk locals from the Chelyabinsk region sent locally produced belts made of dog fur to the training camp. We have talked about their dog fur collection initiative a few times before in our sitreps.

Sergey Golikov, a Communist member of the Reshetov rural council in the Kochkov district of the Novosibirsk region, has been killed during the “special military operation.” He is already the second municipal delegate from the Novosibirsk region to be killed in Ukraine. Mediazona [independent Russian media  outlet] together with the BBC jointly published the new summary of the confirmed losses by the Russian Army. The number of the mobilized soldiers killed has reached 363 (compared to 326 a week ago).

As a punishment for his anti-mobilization video, a Russian court prohibited the head of the Russian liberal Yabloko Party in Yakutsk Anatoly Nogovitsyn from certain activities including leaving his home during the night, using the Internet, and participating in mass actions. In the video, Nogovitsyn said that all those who went to Ukraine to kill people would be “covered with shame.” Alexander Byvshev, a poet from Orel, who in a Facebook post referred to the mobilized soldiers as “chmobicks” [roughly, a portmanteau of schmuck and mobik, a derogatory slang for draftee], was sentenced to a seven-day term for “promoting hate against the Russian Army” as reported by the human-rights activist Alexander Podrabinek who got the information from Byvshev himself.