mobilization briefs
December 4, 2022

Mobilization in Russia for December 2–3, CIT volunteer summary

Dmitry Peskov, Russian President’s Spokesman, claimed again that the mobilization in Russia has ended, however he did not provide any additional confirmation of this. In contradiction to his words, the Voyenny Ombudsmen [Military Ombudsman] Telegram channel published another response to the request of a soldier to terminate the contract. This time, the Main Personnel Directorate of the Ministry of Defense [of Russia] reports that all legal rules related to the "partial" mobilization remain valid. The Sirena Telegram channel has put together the main facts confirming the ongoing mobilization.

The Ministry of Defense of Russia has prepared the draft of the pay procedure of the monthly Presidential social payments to mobilized soldiers. Responsibilities for the allocation and making of payments are assigned to the unit commanders, and those who signed contracts lose the right to payment.

Councils of mothers and wives have started to be created in the regions to cooperate with the authorities and control aid to soldiers. Such associations appeared in at least three regions: the Pskov, Kursk and Sakhalin regions.

Kazan social media channels published a video with a riot of mobilized soldiers. The video shows soldiers opening the gates and leaving the military unit, along the way clashing with those who tried to stop them from leaving. At the same time, state-owned media outlets called this video a fake. In particular, the pro-Kremlin Tatar-Inform news agency stated that the video "is circulated through Ukrainian sources to destabilize the situation in the country [in Russia]." According to this news agency, “the soldiers went to meet their relatives, they were in a hurry and did not have time to register on the way out. After being reminded, they returned to undergo this procedure.” Later, this video was deleted from Kazan channels.

Instead of the promised training in Nizhny Novgorod, a group of men drafted less than a month ago from the Orel, Tambov, and Kaluga regions were sent on November 26 to a location near Belgorod. According to their relatives, their commanding officers didn’t accompany them. Some of the draftees were assigned a new military specialty without any additional training. In Belgorod, their commanders received a telegram containing an order to proceed into the combat zone. One of the commanders, on video, reads the document and wonders, “Are you proposing to just senselessly do away with the people or what?

Mikhail Nosov, the first Russian draftee freed from a basement detention in the so-called DPR, was admitted to a hospital in Podolsk. After two weeks in the basement without being able to take a shower, he developed scabies. Twelve more Russians are still being held in the same basement in the village of Zavitne Bazhannya.

At 7am [on December 2], a group of police and draft office personnel took 6 or 7 students from a dormitory at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. Attorney Alexander Aldaev, retained by the brother of one of the students, Matvey Yudin, informed the Sota Telegram channel that the students were taken against their will to the Savelovo draft office and then, later in the evening, to the collection point on Ugreshskaya Street. The students’ relatives and their attorneys were not allowed to see them. All of the students attend the university in person and, therefore, are eligible for the draft deferral. The Financial University didn’t react to the mobilization of its students until one day after the situation was publicized and the statement it issued was unconvincing and contradicted some of the established facts.

The Republic of Belarus is seeing an increase in mobilization-related activities. Draft offices in Belarus demand that all citizens pay them a visit by year’s end for “data check-up”. Unable to issue individual notices at the volume required, the draft offices now simply publish announcements in newspapers and claim that those are equivalent to personalized draft notices.

The Russian Ministry of Defense showed how draftees practiced adjusting artillery fire with a quadcopter. In the Stavropol region, a farewell ceremony for mobilized soldiers heading to "areas of combat cohesion" took place. Against this backdrop, mobilized soldiers from the Murmansk region have to relieve themselves outside, because the WC in their unit is out of service.

Danil Narbutovskikh, a father of three, mobilized on September 28 from Pervouralsk, was killed in the Luhansk region on November 14. Alexander Panteleev, a mobilized resident of Chukotka, assigned to the 155th Marine Brigade, was killed on November 8.

Schoolgirls from the Kostroma region sew handkerchiefs with embroidered prayers and the letter Z for Russian soldiers. Students across the country continue to supply the Russian Army with necessary items. In the Amur region, students of the School of Service and Trade produce balaclavas for mobilized soldiers. We may be talking about a state order for the supply of balaclavas to the army. The situation is similar at the Vyatka Electrical Engineering School, where students make potbelly stoves.

Naila Mullaeva, a journalist from Kazan, received a six-day administrative arrest for protesting against mobilization. She was also fined 30,000 rubles for "discrediting the armed forces." A mobilized Ulyanovsk resident sued the military commissariat after he was denied replacing military service with alternative civilian service.

The Meduza media outlet found out the details of how the Kremlin was preparing a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the "mothers of mobilized servicemen."

In several Russian regions, there are heating problems caused by a shortage of public utilities employees, some of whom have been mobilized. Residents of Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Rostov and other cities in Russia's south complain about heating problems. Some of the mobilized utility workers got into the 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade on the front line, others were assigned to the 32nd Engineer-Sapper Regiment.