Mobilization in Russia for Feb. 6–7, 2023, CIT volunteer summary

Russia’s Ministry of Defense offered to allow all servicemen, including conscripts, to take part in peacekeeping missions. The State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] is planning to consider making urgent changes to the peacekeeping missions bill. According to the RBC media outlet, it is noteworthy that offers to make the new regulation retroactive are made, meaning that the effects of the change will apply to legal relations consummated as early as Aug. 15, 2022.

A bill to prohibit the advertisement of legal and medical services offering potential conscripts to legally avoid military service is introduced to the State Duma. Should this bill pass, individuals will become liable to a fine of 2,000-2,500 rubles, officials to a fine of 4,000-20,000 rubles, and legal entities to a fine of 100,000-500,000 rubles.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has developed a “uniform of the new generation” for servicemen fighting in Ukraine. The new uniform looks exactly the same, but “the quality of fabrics and stitching” is improved. It also includes insulated rubber boots. The new uniform will be supplied to the servicemen in the spring.

The Ministry of Defence once again has confirmed that the General Staff’s directive regarding the draft exemptions for the fathers of multiple children stays in effect. Member of the State Duma Nina Ostanina and member of the Moscow City Duma Leonid Timonov have received official responses to such an effect. The Voyenny Ombudsmen [Military Ombudsman] Telegram channel believes that this leads to the conclusion that the fathers of multiple children are exempt from military service, and those of them who are already drafted into service must be returned home. However, the courts and the draft boards are refusing to return the fathers home, claiming that the exemptions were abolished. For example, Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky’s City Court of the Zabaykalsky region has dismissed the lawsuit from a father of multiple children stating that according to the General Staff’s telegraph message of Dec. 25, 2022, the order No. 315/3658dsp of Oct. 4, 2022, is considered to no longer be in effect.

Member of the State Duma Ostanina has also received a response from the Ministry of Defense to her inquiry into the number of citizens who could be mobilized while having disabled children or being the only child of a single parent. The Ministry of Defense stated that they cannot give an answer to such an inquiry since they do not collect data that would enable them to provide the answer.

The news of mobilized soldiers getting killed in action in the war in Ukraine continues to become known. They are 23-year-old Dim Shaikhislamov and 44-year-old Vyacheslav Bayduganov from Bashkortostan [constituent republic of Russia], Askhat Aldashov from the Astrakhan region, and Marat Salmanov from Dagestan [constituent republic of Russia]. Moreover, the commander of one of the regiments of mobilized soldiers, Major General Dmitry Ulyanov, was killed. He became the fifth RuAF general killed since the start of the full-scale invasion.

In the Zabaykalsky region, 76 former members of the Young Army [pro-Kremlin youth organization] went to war. Of these, 6 people have already been killed, and another two are missing.

In the meantime, Omsk authorities plan to expand the cemetery for those who were killed in the war, as the places in the cemeteries of the city are running out, and the bodies of the dead arrive from Ukraine regularly. Therefore, it is planned to add a plot of 34 hectares to the Old Northern Memorial Cemetery.

Conscripts are also being killed and injured. As a result of a drone attack in the Bryansk region, a conscript soldier and his commander was wounded. There is no official confirmation of this information yet, but the Astra Telegram channel reports the details: the victims are Aleksandr Balashov and Muslim Gunaev, and they were taken to a hospital. However, not all cases are related to hostilities. Conscript Yaroslav Tkachenko died in Volgograd. According to the official version, he slipped, fell down the stairs, and died as a result of a spinal fracture. Nevertheless, there is evidence of violent death. At first, the military assured the relatives that it was an accident and came up with details on the go. But a week later, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into the death of the conscript. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Tula conscript Matvey Kharitonov died after hypothermia in a military unit. According to his father, doctors allegedly refused to treat him. On Dec. 22, the young man arrived at military unit No. 76736 in the Naro-Fominsk district of the Moscow region and died on January 8.

In Yakutsk, schoolchildren were locked up for several hours in a military commissariat [enlistment office] for a medical examination. On Feb. 6, tenth-graders of school No. 33 were not allowed out of the military commissariat from the morning until 5 p.m., where they underwent a medical examination for military registration.

Mobilized soldiers from Tatarstan have recorded a statement revealing that their unit has been placed under the control of the 11th Regiment, "People’s Militia of the DPR," which is sending them "to be killed." Instead of the promised service on the third line of defense, they are being sent to assault. Complaints from relatives to the Kazan prosecution have received the response that "the ‘DPR’ is not Russia."

Another complaint from mobilized soldiers against the command of the "DPR": soldiers from the Irkutsk region recorded a video message asking to prevent new losses. The soldiers of the 1479th Regiment reveal that recently the command sent them to the military unit in the "DPR," where they formed an assault detachment. However, they were only trained to guard various objects.

The mobilized soldiers of the 1444th regiment, who survived the strike on Makiivka, recorded a video. According to them, the entire officer corps was removed completely. Their unit went through unpleasant situations and became close as a family. On this basis, they ask to be left to serve together.

Governor of the Samara Region Dmitry Azarov reports that the authorities continue to clarify the number of injured servicemen during a missile attack on a vocational school in Makiivka. To obtain information about the whereabouts of the soldiers, he advised their relatives to contact the enlistment offices or call the call center. The head of the region promised to help the wounded in the treatment and support the families of the military.

According to the Kremlevskaya Tabakerka [Kremlin Snuffbox] Telegram channel, the mother of a mobilized man who went missing after the shelling of Makiivka committed suicide in Togliatti. Other sources cannot confirm the information, however, an inquiry of the whereabouts of Mikhail Konovalov was published on social networks, which fits the description of the mobilized son of this woman.

According to a report of the government of the Vladimir region on budget expenditures for lump-sum payments to military personnel, at least 6,250 residents of the Vladimir region were sent to war in Ukraine. Officials reported that all mobilized soldiers are volunteer fighters and contractors based on the lists of the regional enlistment office. They received a lump sum cash payment of 100 thousand rubles. For these purposes, in 2022, more than 625 million rubles were allocated from the regional budget.

Mobilized soldiers from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous region —Yugra [federal subject of Russia] arrived in the “special military operation” zone. No one was left in the training centers. The source reports this referring to Vice-Governor of Yugra Alexander Tirtok.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation published a video of the mobilized soldiers preparing at the training ground of the Western Military District. The report says that the fighters will go to the “special military operation” zone only after they complete combat coordination. The regular teleconference was attended by military personnel of the Central Military District located at the “special military operation” zone and their relatives from Yekaterinburg.

On Feb. 4, the wounded junior sergeant, Dmitry N., escaped from the hospital in the Arkhangelsk region. He was arrested two days later. The military serviceman was handed over to the command. He’s being checked now.

Two participants of the "special military operation" were sent to a penal colony. Fearing for their lives, senior warrant officer Vladimir Kotov and private Yegor Kotov decided not to follow the order of the commander in September 2022 in the Kherson region. The court sentenced them to a penal colony for more than three years.

A criminal case was opened for "calling for violence against the organizers of the mobilization" in the Kaluga region. An undisclosed man is being charged with public calls to terrorism (Art. 205.2, part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and extremism (Art. 280, part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In the video recorded by the security forces, the man says that he regrets the crime he committed under the “influence of Ukrainian propaganda.”

Ilyas Gabdulkhaev, a student from Bashkortostan, was sentenced to 1 year of conditional sentence for arson of the military registration desk. The verdict was passed on Jan. 23.

The Vyborg garrison military court has sentenced the lieutenant of the 138th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade to a 40 thousand rubles fine under the article on abuse of power for beating his subordinate.

Mediazona [an independent Russian media outlet] spoke with the mobilized electrician Sergey Stenkin, we have reported an initiation of a case against him in yesterday's summary. The electrician from Amur faces 10 years in prison for leaving a unit to get custodial care for his seriously ill mother.

A 27-year-old Nikolay, mobilized from the Khabarovsk region, revealed that he had been beaten by his own commanders and locked up in a barn on the territory of the “DPR”. The man claims that he “distinctly heard that he would be “reset” (they would kill him — ed.) by the evening.” He told the Astra Telegram channel how he managed to get out and what happened next.

The Bryansk garrison military court refused to consider the claim of a mobilized soldier, challenging the decision of a draft board because the claim was filed by a relative of a soldier and not by himself.

In the Altai village of Aya (population of about 2 thousand residents), people collect money for a UAV for the so-called “special military operation”. A fundraising notice hangs on a stand in front of a store where locals regularly buy groceries on credit.

It became known about the fact that high-tech enterprises of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos would produce potbelly stoves. The students of the technical school of construction and urban economy from Ulan-Ude upgraded three buggies for the needs of the Army. Meanwhile, the convicts from the penal colony in the Pskov region sew camouflage awnings for soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

According to the students of the Khokhol Lyceum, they make matches for soldiers not only during labor lessons or their free time but also during history and social science lessons. Kindergarteners and schoolchildren throughout Russia have been told about the war, and they are forced to make trench candles. Meanwhile, the children's charitable foundation collects briefs and toilet paper for mobilized soldiers.