Mobilization in Russia for Feb. 4–5, 2023, CIT volunteer summary
Head of North Ossetia [constituent Russia’s republic] Sergei Menyailo had got under shelling in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region when he was visiting military positions near Vasilyevka. At some point, counterfire began from the AFU side, “We were at the forefront with our mobilized soldiers, who were carrying out a task of the command. There was shelling, and everyone hid from the fire. No harm done. The shelling ended, and everyone continued their work,” Menyailo told the Baza Telegram channel.
In Penza, members of the regional Legislative Assembly proposed to toughen the punishment for evading conscription for military service. A session of the Legislative Assembly of the Penza region will take place on Feb. 10. The members plan to come up with an initiative to amend the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. They want to toughen Article 328 and introduce a fine “in the amount of 300,000 to 500,000 rubles, or compulsory labor for up to 480 hours, or custodial restraint for a period of 2 to 4 years, or forced labor for a period of up to 4 years, or arrest for a term of up to 6 months, or imprisonment for a term of up to 4 years”.
Authorities of Chuvashia [Russia’s constituent republic] have finally provided buses for its mobilized men, this time to return them to Ukraine after the leave. Earlier, relatives of mobilized soldiers from Mordovia [Russia’s constituent republic] and Chuvashia complained about the lack of buses to come home on leave. “Buses, which brought the first mobilized men home on leave, have now departed for the zone of the special military operation”, said the wife of one serviceman from Cheboksary. Additional buses with mobilized men going to Ukraine left from Novocheboksarsk and other cities of Chuvashia. Their relatives claim that “regional authorities sourced transportation means for soldiers” only after they had complained and made the issue public.
The construction of the Al-Rahim mosque will not be completed in Ufa. Money is needed for the “special military operation”. “To complete the work at this building, an amount of two to four billion rubles is required,” Radiy Khabirov, Head of the Russia’s constituent Republic of Bashkortostan, said. “It should be extrabudgetary funds. I am clear-eyed about the situation and can say that in the next three years, we will not invest much money there. Today, we are thinking about how to support our soldiers and their families and maintain the economy.” Recall that the construction of the mosque began in 2007. It was planned that Al-Rahim would be one of the biggest mosques in Europe, with an area of 12,000 square meters and a capacity of 5,000 people.
Six mobilized soldiers have escaped in the Voronezh region. According to the Baza Telegram channel, the soldiers got off the train in Voronezh without command permission. Their current location is unknown. All-point bulletins were sent to the regional police offices; in Moscow and the Moscow region, traffic police units were reinforced. According to the police, some of the soldiers could have left for Moscow in a white Volkswagen Polo taxi.
Journalists of Baza spoke with Yegor Amirov (the name is changed), a conscript soldier who escaped from his military unit near Vyborg because of the war and crossed the border with Latvia, where he subsequently received asylum. The man told the story of his escape and shared his impressions of life in Latvia.
Medical students from Kazan are being prepared for missions in Donbas. Students are planned to be deployed to the so-called “LPR,” “DPR,” Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions to work as paramedics on a volunteer basis. The first group of volunteers will be departing to the occupied territories on Feb. 6.
The number of Russian troops killed as a result of the strike in Makiivka reached 105. The list of casualties was extended to include Aleksandr Shatalov and Oleg Groshev. It also became known that driver and paramedic Yuri Zamarayev mobilized from the Vologda region was killed while on active duty.
Olga Romanova, Executive Director of the Rus’ Sidyashchaya [Russia Behind Bars] civil rights movement, reports that the Ministry of Defense has launched a recruitment campaign among convicts. She refers to sources from the Kemerovo and Volgograd regions.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense continues to post videos showing "combat activities in the special operation zone" performed by draftees serving in the Western Military District units. In the Amur region, the crews of anti-tank guided missile systems of the combined arms army of the Eastern Military District are improving the skills of destroying armored vehicles of a mock enemy.
State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly] member Dmitry Saveliev, about whom we wrote in yesterday's summary, posted photos on his VKontakte social network page. In these photos, he stands next to men in military uniforms. The pictures were reportedly taken on the front line. The photos were posted by Saveliev the day after it was reported that he secretly got off the train going to the front and flew to Moscow in early January.
Staff at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg sent a UAZ utility minivan to the war in Ukraine. They did it for their colleague who went to the front as a volunteer and currently serves there as a paramedic.
In the city of Kurgan, residents are making trench candles for the “special military operation” participants. The candles are being manufactured at the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Mother of God. Volunteers from the Stavropol region sent food packages and as well as letters to the service members of the Southern Military District who are carrying out their assigned missions in the “special military operation” zone. Children also took part in preparing and packaging dry borscht kits to “keep the fighters warm in their positions.”
In one of the recent summaries, we reported that the K-9 animal kennel from Irkutsk handed over two armored vehicles with cargo to mobilized soldiers from Irkutsk. Now the Irkutskiy blog local Telegram channel urges residents not to donate money to this kennel. “There is no guarantee,” the authors of the channel say, “that it [money] will not be spent on another “package of aid” for waging war and killing people.”
Junior students of the Tambov musical school perform a song whose lyrics include a line: “The car is painted with swastika, a Uke is driving it”. The author of the song (former employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service from Tambov Aleksandr Vanyushkin) and the mayor of the town of Kotovsk, the United Russia party [Putin’s ruling party] member Aleksey Plakhotnikov sing along with them.