mobilization briefs
January 9, 2023

Mobilization in Russia for Jan. 6-8, 2023, CIT volunteer summary

Ukrainian authorities named a new date when the second wave of mobilization in Russia will commence. According to Ukrainian intelligence, it will begin on Jan. 15. It is planned to draft 500,000 people. "We expect that Russia will launch attacks in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, as well as, possibly, in the Zaporizhzhia region, and will be defending in Crimea and the Kherson region. This is the number of troops needed for such a task," deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Vadim Skibitsky told The Guardian. According to him, it will take about two months for the Russian side to draft and train new units.

Head of Ingushetia [Russia’s constituent republic] Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov instructed Adam Malsagov, the head of the Republican Youth Committee [regional state agency], that his agency was necessary for solving issues of mobilization and conscription, "Today we have the special military operation; we have a serious situation in the country and the republic. Starting tomorrow, [you shall] engage in activities related to conscription, explaining the existing laws and criminal responsibility." Notably this statement was omitted in a report about the meeting published on the official website of the Government of Ingushetia on Jan. 5.

State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] member representing the ruling United Russia Party Andrey Gurulyov urged the Government and the Ministry of Defense to start actively preparing a mobilization reserve. "Today, more draftees are not yet needed to solve problems within the framework of the special military operation, but what will happen next? This is called strategic deterrence," Gurulyov said. It is worth noting that on Sept. 11, 2022, 10 days before the start of mobilization, when asked whether it was necessary, Gurulyov replied that "it is not needed presently." Recently, on Jan. 4, he also stated that "there are no prerequisites for the second wave of mobilization in the next six months."

A VChK-OGPU Telegram channel source said that the Command of the RuAF considers the possibility of reducing compensation payments for minor injuries during combat operations. It is planned to leave payments only in case of loss of limbs and other serious injuries. This is caused by a large number of injuries.

Roman Starovoit, Governor of the Kursk region, said that he spent the first week of 2023 in the Wagner Group training camp along with “colleagues from the Administration”. Armata military training will be held for teenagers in the Belgorod region. It will be organized for 16-17-year-old schoolchildren and students. Boys and girls will live in tent camps in four districts of the region. They will undergo medical, tactical, drill, weapons proficiency, and radiation-chemical training.

The Directorate of Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports a strike on a base of Russian mobilized soldiers in Rubizhne. At least fourteen Russian soldiers were reportedly killed as a result of the strike. This information has not been commented on by the Russia side.

The Ministry of Defense of Russia, in turn, announced the conduct of a “retaliatory operation” in response to the “illicit strike of the Kyiv regime in the first minutes of January 2023 at the point of temporary deployment of Russian soldiers.” According to the MoD of Russia, there were a total of 1,300 servicemen in the two dormitories in Kramatorsk, and more than 600 people were reportedly killed as a result of the strike. The spokesperson of the Eastern Group of Forces of the AFU, Serhiy Cherevaty, called the data of the Russian side "an information operation in response to the successful actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine." According to him, "this information is as true as the data that they [RuAF] have destroyed all our HIMARS launchers."

A source of the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel told how the 1444th Motorized Rifle Regiment ended up in Makiivka and subsequently came under fire. In accordance with the order of the Eighth Army commander, on the eve of Dec. 31, five regiments of territorial troops were sent to the combat zone, including the 1444th Motorized Rifle Regiment. They were supposed to take up defense in the area of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Army Corps of so-called “DPR” in the second echelon, for which the corresponding command order was given.

Relatives of  mobilized soldiers from several cities in the Samara region recorded a video, in which they demanded that the command take measures to provide the mobilized with everything necessary, and also stop hiding behind the backs of mobilized men. One group of relatives said, "We don't need war, we want peace".

Four women who came to the “rally of wives and mothers” of mobilized soldiers were detained in Samara. In social networks, the rally was announced as organized by local authorities, but police officers, including those from the Centre for Combating Extremism [also known as Centre E, which is a unit within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation], were waiting for its participants on the square. Eventually, the police, having drawn up protocols, released four women who were detained on the Slava [Glory] Square. Those, in turn, wrote complaints about the policemen themselves — according to the women, they came to the square “to admire the ice rink and the Christmas tree”.

A video of an injured man claiming to be Anton Golovinsky, a mobilized resident of Samara and a victim of the Ukrainian strike in Makiivka, spread on media websites. It was further alleged that the man had eventually died in the hospital in Rostov-on-Don. The ASTRA Telegram channel checked the identity of the soldier who was being impersonated in the video and found out that the man who identified himself as Anton Golovinsky was in fact a totally different person. Subsequently the family of Anton contacted ASTRA and confirmed that Anton indeed was present in that vocational school on Dec. 31, but he has not been heard of ever since. They also reaffirmed that the man featured in the video was not Anton but a different person.

More and more names of mobilized soldiers killed in the incident in Makiivka are being made public. Among them are Vladislav Inozemtsev, born in 1997, from Novokuybyshevsk; sergeant Aleksandr Grishin, born in 1984; Sergey Bezaltychnyi, born in 1986, Nikita Sokolov and Aleksey Goryunov from Tolyatti; private Andrey Yumadilov, born in 1975, from Samara; Denis Fedichkin, born in 1988, from the village of Alekseyevka; Dmitry Katkasov, born in 2001, from the village of Vasilyevka; Anatoly Konstantinov, born in 1984, from the village of Bolshaya Konstantinovka; Pavel Kuzmin, born in 1989, from the village of Petrovka; Aleksandr Tolpygin, born in 1991, from the village of Svetloye Polye. The first coffins from Makiivka have reportedly been delivered to the settlement of Mirny in the Samara region, with the total number of deaths among residents of this locality amounting to five. Other than that, one injured mobilized man with his fingers torn off returned to Mirny. He was taken to the local hospital. Following a commemoration gathering, a mural appeared in Samara in the memory of mobilized fellow countrymen who lost their lives. It reads “Samara. Makiivka. We remember. We mourn.” Funerals of the mobilized who died in Makiivka began on Jan. 7 and will continue on Jan. 8, 9 and 10. Today, mourners gathered in Novokuybyshevsk to pay their last tribute to Vladislav Inozemtsev and Georgy Lozhkin.

At the same time, dozens of residents of the Samara region report that in six days they still cannot find out the fate of their relatives who were in the vocational school building in Makiivka at the time of the strike.They are refused to be told whether their mobilized relatives are alive, killed or missing.

Obituary notices of mobilized soldiers come not only to the Samara region. Sergey Maksimchenko, a mobilized sergeant from the Suzunsky district of the Novosibirsk region, was killed in action back in Nov. 2022. Ivan Gusarov, Ivan Alekseev and Kamil Gallyamov from the Bryansk region were also killed in the war in Ukraine.

A new video message of soldiers from the Belgorod region to Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu was published requesting to sort the following out: mobilized artillerymen were sent to the “DPR” to reinforce the 1st Army Corps. There, they were sent to the infantry. This story is confirmed by the pro-Russian Telegram channel Zapiski Veterana [Veteran’s Notes]. One of its posts criticized the transfer of artillerymen of the 568th Howitzer Battalion, who are now subordinate to the 1st Army Corps, to the infantry. The mother of the head of the Ruka Pomoshchi [Helping Hand] charitable organization and a Putin's supporter from Stary Oskol, Dmitry Pashchenko, addressed the Governor of the Belgorod region. She asked to find out why her son had been sent to the front line to serve in the speciality he had not trained in: he was an artillery gunner, but had been transferred to the infantry.

Sergey Tkachyov, a resident of the Mikhailovsky district of Primorsky region and a father of many children, received a call from a district police officer and was demanded to come to the military training camp. Tkachyov went to court, indicating that he has four dependent children and that privates and sergeants under 35 are subject to conscription within mobilization while he is older. The district and regional courts denied Tkachyov's claim, arguing that he was not given a draft notice and the decision to mobilize him was not made.

The classes for students of the Don State Technical University (in Rostov-on-Don) were canceled in Sept. 2022, and the students were sent to Rostselmash [plant which produces agricultural machinery] for “practical training”. The students were not even allowed to take end-of-term tests and exams, as they were promised to be home free for working at the factory. It should be noted that the plant has no contracts with the Ministry of Defense, but it was regularly used for military purposes back in the days of the Soviet Union.

There was a video showing a nurse extorting money from a wounded soldier, threatening to send him to the front line if he refused.

It became known that the Samara reservists killed in Makiivka were blessed with a cross stolen in Luhansk before being sent to the front. Meanwhile, Сhairman of the Department for Church's Society and Mass Mediа Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate Vladimir Legoyda stated that more “military priests” are needed in the war zone.

After the publication of the Sota Telegram channel, the Amur “women’s council” removed the words “luboV” [loVe] and “Zabota” [care] from the package of homemade dry borscht for Russian servicemen in Ukraine.