Mobilization in Russia for December 8–9, CIT volunteer summary
At a press conference after the EAEU summit in Bishkek, answering a question from journalists about what factors could influence the decision on additional mobilization, President Putin said that "there are no such factors today, they are not visible." Earlier, he also talked about the lack of need for mobilization at the moment. The president was also asked about ongoing supply problems. According to the journalist, reports about this came to “military correspondents” and volunteers. She asked whom to believe – the reports of the Russian Ministry of Defense or the soldiers from the front line. “You can’t trust anyone, only me,” Russia’s president replied. He stressed that supply issues remain, but the most acute ones had already been resolved.
The Voyennyi Ombudsmen Military Ombudsman] project publishes another answer to the "pile of points over i’s" on the completion of the "partial" mobilization.
Viktor Sobolev, member of the State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] Committee on Defense, said that "the second wave of mobilization in Russia will not be required if soldiers do their job competently."
Secretary of the United Russia [Putin's ruling party] General Council Andrey Turchak said that he would work with the Russian Defense Ministry on the discrepancy between the numbers of personal tokens that were issued upon mobilization and those that were received during military service. Because of this discrepancy, mobilized soldiers cannot enter their personal account on the Ministry's website. Turchak also visited the mobilized from the Belgorod region located in the positions of the second line of defense in the occupied part of the Kherson region.
The Russian Ministry of Defense will not provide equipment or arm Belgorod territorial defense units, which were previously announced by Governor Gladkov. “These are people's combatants, that is, voluntary formations of citizens. They are not yet part of the Armed Forces and, accordingly, cannot be armed or provided as such”, said Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defense Committee. He added that the territorial defense units will solve tasks from the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, as he specified, the members of the self-defense battalions are considered civilians.
The “Mobilization” Telegram channel subscriber was given a draft notice marked “conscription service”, although he had already served in the army 5 years ago.
New details have emerged of the story about the draftees from Serpukhov abandoned by their command in the Luhansk region. Apparently, they were shelled twice: the first shelling occurred while they were awaiting help from the Ministry of Defense, and the second came when they were returned to the frontline.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, draftees continue undergoing intensive combat preparation on a training ground in Belarus. In particular, servicemen from the West Military District are practicing shooting from 2A36 Giatsint-B towed 152mm field guns. Meanwhile, mobilized men from the Ivanovo region are undergoing training in one of the training grounds in the rear of the “special military operation” zone.
Mobilized soldier Sergey Serebryakov was buried on December 6 in the city of Kotovsk in the Tambov region. In October, he was drafted in the Smolensk region and dispatched to a tank regiment as a communications specialist. On November 11, he was killed near Kreminna. The village of Pervomayskoe in the Kursk region bade its final farewell to Roman Zhuravlev. He was also mobilized in October and was killed on November 8. In their latest report on the confirmed losses of the Russian Army, Mediazona [independent Russian media outlet], the BBC, and a team of volunteers put the number of the mobilized soldiers killed at 430 (a week ago, the number was 363).
Volunteers from the town of Bolotnoye in the Novosibirsk region are asking the locals to bring them empty tin cans so they can make “dugout candles” out of them. Siberian pharmacies belonging to the Novosibirsk pharmacy network set out wooden crates to collect medications and medical supplies for the military.
A draft office in Kabardino-Balkaria [Russia's constituent republic] changed a draftee’s military specialty from carpenter to rifleman. His mother appealed to the military prosecutor’s office and to his military unit but her efforts were in vain. On December 9, a regional court in the Zabaykalsky region considered an appellate complaint from a Chita resident who argued that his draft in the army as part of the “partial” mobilization was an error. The court upheld the decision by a district court that decided that the decision by the draft office to mobilize the man was lawful.
A draftee has died in a military encampment near Omsk. The body of Sergey S., 34, was found during the night of Dec. 8 with no signs of violent death. The authorities are investigating.
Sergey Zhukov, a member of the municipal council of Blagoveshchensk in Russia's constituent Republic of Bashkortostan, blurred the faces of mobilized men using scary emojis in a post he shared on an online social media network. As Zhukov explained to the Podyom [Uprise] media outlet, he did not have any other emojis at hand. Nevertheless, his post helped to raise money to buy antibiotics and a vehicle for the mobilized.
Youth centers for military and sports training and patriotic education will be established in Russian regions, as authorities announced at the “We Are Together” international forum at a session dedicated to patriotic education and to promotion of homeland security competencies. The centers will seek to engage young people between 14 and 18 years of age.
Teachers from Kamchatka [a peninsula in the Russian Far East] recorded a video appeal in support of the war in Ukraine, wishing the mobilized good luck and promising to teach “the true history” to children. In the Primorsky region , a sewing competition for making clothes for the military was held among orphans and disabled children. Children attending special needs schools and living in state-run specialized boarding schools, as well as children with severe disabilities, were told to sew balaclavas, snoods, identification armbands, and draw greeting cards. Children from the city of Kemerovo met with riot police, painted their faces and recorded a video dedicated to the racoon that was stolen from the zoo in Ukraine’s Kherson.
Some good news: a family from the Perm region managed to bring a mobilized father of three back home. A cat named Timofey, stolen by a mobilized soldier in the village of Yuzhnyi of the Omsk region on Nov. 20, has been retrieved. The cat, who was showing almost no signs of life, was found on the highway by other servicemen. It appears that the animal was simply abandoned by the man who stole him. Now the cat is back home, warm and safe.
Pavel Nikolin, the Novoshakhtinsk shooter, told the journalists that he had opened fire on police officers and tried to flee believing that he was still in Ukraine chased by Ukrainian soldiers. According to Nikolin, as soon as he realized that he was being pursued by Russian special forces, he surrendered immediately. Nikolin claimed that he had lagged behind the rest of his unit and got lost. The man refused to confirm whether he served with the Wagner Group. The court arrested Nikolin for two months. He is suspected of having used a machine gun to shoot at police officers on Dec. 6. The owner of the so-called Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that he was prepared to stand surety for Nikolin.