Mobilization in Russia for Jun. 16-18, 2023 CIT Volunteer SummaryÂ
Authorities and Legislation
The State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] is reviewing a bill seeking to introduce labor education courses into the school curriculum, to ensure that schoolchildren are involved in community service, Minister of Education Sergey Kravtsov said. The legislators suggest that the ban currently forbidding the involvement of schoolchildren in labor without their own or parental consent (Article 34 part 4 of the law "On Education in the Russian Federation") should be lifted.
Maxim Sokolov, head of Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ, said that manpower shortages were forcing the company to employ men sentenced to correctional labor. Sokolov failed to establish the exact number of convicts that AvtoVAZ would employ, but said it was likely to be in the hundreds.
Army Recruitment and Military Service Advertising
Advertisements promoting contract service were seen in Saint Petersburg, as well as in the Vladimir and Astrakhan regions. Meanwhile, in Yekaterinburg, the Wagner Group’s recruitment ads appeared in the metro stations.
The authorities of the Zabaykalsky region have increased the one-time payment for signing a contract from 150,000 [$1795] to 250,000 rubles [$2990]. Russian citizens and foreigners who sign a contract through the military service recruitment facility after Jun. 6, 2023 will receive this payment.
According to the Mobilizatsiya [Mobilization] Telegram channel, a student was denied a draft deferment because his Russian citizenship was acquired only recently. The young man was born and raised in Kazakhstan, completed his undergraduate degree at a Russian university in 2019, and gained Russian citizenship last year before enrolling in a master's program. While studying in the master's program, he received a notice for a data check-up and reported to the military commissariat [enlistment office]. He was informed there that only students who pursued their undergraduate studies while being Russian citizens have the right to deferment. The young man was deemed fit for service and is expected to report for military training on Jul. 4.
In Bratsk, the military commissar of the city spoke to students from a local college about military service, including the possibility of signing contracts. Prior to that, a priest who had been to war had already visited the teenagers. He told the students about the difficulties of life on the frontlines and combat tactics.
The head of Petrozavodsk city (the capital of Russia’s constituent Republic of Karelia), Vladimir Lyubarsky, announced that he volunteered to fight in the Akhmat battalion. According to him, he has already undergone training at the Russian Special Forces University in Chechnya [Russia’s constituent republic]. However, some local residents believe this way Lyubarsky is trying to escape from problems in the city related to waste management and transportation reforms.
Mobilized Soldiers and Volunteer Fighters
The lists of those mobilized soldiers killed in the war were supplemented by Rail Nigmatullin from the Russia’s constituent Republic of Bashkortostan, Maksim Kotenko from the Novosibirsk region, Aleksandr Kiyaev and Artyom Kuvaldin from the Orenburg region, Dmitry Ushakov from the Tver region, Yevgeny Krivokhizhin and Vadim Sheremet from the Volgograd region, Viktor Tumanov from the Russia’s constituent Republic of Khakassia, Leonid Korotkov from the Russia’s constituent Republic of Buryatia, as well as Aleksandr Toropov, Yevgeny Korolyov, Denis Shevchenko, and Ivan Parfenov from the Vladimir region.
BBC’s Russian service, who gather open source data on the losses of the Russian Armed Forces in the war with Ukraine, have revealed how the profile of the typical Russian soldier who was killed in Ukraine has changed over the course of a year. In the initial months of the invasion, it was a 21-year-old contract soldier, but now it is a 34-year-old former convict who is used in fighting as cannon fodder.
186 female relatives of 50+ year old draftees illegally mobilized in the "LPR" and "DPR" have written another appeal to the leadership of the Russian Federation. The women claim that despite reaching the maximum age for military service, the mobilized soldiers are not being discharged. Previously, around 500 female residents of the "LPR" and "DPR" wrote an appeal to Putin, demanding the return of their loved ones from the war. After some time, thanks to media attention, 10 illegally mobilized men over the age of 50 were discharged from service.
Mobilized soldiers from Crimea and the Stavropol region complained that they had been sent to the "militia" outside Bakhmut with no documents, normal weapons and salary. They demanded to be transferred to the "real army" and refused to go into assaults again.
A Russian serviceman, who had been thrown in a hole by his own commanders demanding to confess to looting, stopped getting in touch, his wife said. We covered this case in more detail in one of our previous summaries.
Mobilized servicemen of the RuAF, stationed outside Svatove, complained about the shortage of drinking water. According to the servicemen, the delivery of drinking water is limited and only made by servicemen support foundations, the wells are poisoned, and the water quality in the local water body is poor.
The first 50 volunteers of the "people's guards" of the Kursk region were trained under the guidance of the Rosgvardia [the National Guard of Russia] and the Wagner Group. Governor of the region Roman Starovoyt stated that these men formed a mobilization reserve to ensure territorial defense.
Sentences, Legal Proceedings, and Incidents
In the Tyumen region, a protocol on the "discrediting" of the RuAF was drawn up against Alla Fatkhelislamova, the mother of conscript Afanasy Podaev who was recently killed at the border. In an interview to Novaya Gazeta Europa, the woman said that her son was killed in the Belgorod region during shelling and expressed an opinion that no one needs the war. For that interview, Alla was told on by a "professional" police informer. In the complaint, the informer asked to punish the conscript's mother for "discrediting" the army and clarified that "even during the Great Patriotic War, relatives had no right to express disagreement." Earlier, Mediazona reported about several "professional" informers.
A resident of Novaya Tavolzhanka in the Belgorod region found a grenade launcher with nine shots on the street and buried it in his garden to "fight against Ukrainian saboteurs." He explained this by saying that "his grandfather was a partisan." A local police officer became aware of the find and persuaded the man to hand the weapon over.
A relay cabinet at the Chugun-2 station of the South-Eastern Railway had been set on fire. It is assumed that the aim was to disrupt the deliveries of products from Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works — one of the largest steel producers in Russia. It is unknown who did that; the pro-Kremlin media outlet Mash reports that the arson attempt failed.
Four residents of Simferopol have been sentenced by the court for plotting a terrorist attack. According to the court's findings, the men distributed leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Russian authorities, acquired explosives, and planned to carry out a terrorist act in protest against the annexation of Crimea. The case was initiated following a report by a Federal Security Service (FSB) agent who had previously helped falsify charges against filmmaker Oleg Sentsov. Three of the men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7 to 7.5 years. Another defendant, who was accused only of propagating terrorism, was sentenced to two years in a settlement colony.
In a separate case, a draftee from Tyumen was sentenced to three years of imprisonment for causing grievous bodily harm. The verdict was based on an incident where the draftee, after getting into an altercation with a fellow serviceman at a bar, stabbed him upon returning to the assembly point.
Zhanna Romanovskaya, the head of the financing department of the Ministry of Architecture and Construction of the Vladimir region, who tried to set fire to a military commissariat, was fired. In early June, she threw three Molotov cocktails at a military commissariat in Vladimir on the instructions of telephone scammers who promised to discharge her debts.
The Arkhangelsk Regional Court has increased financial recompense to Yulia Zheleznyakova, a resident of Nyandoma, against whom the administrative case under the article on "discrediting the army" was previously dismissed.
Assistance
Residents of Miass, Chelyabinsk region, built a bathhouse for mobilized soldiers. Meanwhile, Yaroslavl soldiers built a regimental church in the occupied part of the Kherson region.
Irkutsk State Medical University reported fundraising 160,000 rubles [$1,915] as part of the Universities for the Front campaign. According to the Irkutsk Blog project, not all students and employees of the university supported the fundraising. Earlier, it was reported that students of this university were forced to donate money for the war.
A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who has a unique collection of radio-controlled helicopter models, began to teach the basics of UAV control to Russian servicemen, who came on leave from the war zone.
A poster with a Russian serviceman and the inscription "Patriots live here" was put on the stele at the entrance to Mendeleyevsk in Tatarstan [Russia’s constituent republic]. The head of the district explained that by the fact that the residents had already raised 40 million rubles [$ 480,000] to help military men.
Children
According to the Sota media outlet, since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 44 teenagers have been persecuted for political reasons. The youngest of them is 11 years old. Some of them committed arson attacks on military commissariats (mostly young people aged 15-17). But most often, teenagers are tried for setting fire to relay cabinets on railways under the article on sabotage (Article 281 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In contrast to the arsons of military commissariats, where the defendants, as a rule, acted alone, sabotage is committed by a group of people.
​​​​In the Belgorod region, at the championship in civil defense for teenagers and students, they will be taught "to defend the region under conditions of military actions, as well as to protect themselves from weapons of mass destruction and clear debris."
In Mineralnye Vody, Stavropol region, children staying at a summer camp were shown an exhibition dedicated to the war in Ukraine at the Central City Library.
MiscellaneousÂ
A proposal has been made to establish a special nomination for war correspondents as part of the TEFI award. The question of whether to allocate them into a separate category is being discussed, according to the Special Representative of the President of Russia for International Cultural Cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy.