Mobilization in Russia for Mar. 1 – 2, 2023 CIT volunteer summary
The State Duma [lower house of Russia's Federal Assembly], after the second reading, approved a draft bill providing for criminal punishment for discrediting fighters of volunteer units. We covered this initiative in more detail in yesterday's summary.
A draft bill banning advertisements of services assisting in receiving an exemption from military service has been submitted to the State Duma by the Parliament of Bashkortostan [Russia's constituent republic]. The amendments prohibit advertising "legal, consulting, and medical services aimed at facilitating exemption from military duty."
Independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, analyzing the data of civil registration offices about weddings, came to the conclusion that more than 527 thousand people were mobilized in Russia. This calculation is based on data about accelerated marriage procedures held in one day. This option is available for those who have received draft notices and will be called up in the nearest future. In October, Mediazona studied information about such weddings and has now supplemented it with revised data.
Another air defense system was installed in Moscow. A radar was spotted on a landfill site near the Salaryevo metro station.
Employees of one of the companies in Yekaterinburg were instructed to fill out citizen cards for those subject to military registration. Filling out the cards was mandatory. The Sverdlovsk region's draft office stated this was due to bringing the military registration records into compliance.
The new names of the casualties among mobilized men in the war in Ukraine have become known: Dmitry Kotlyarov from the Zabaykalsky region, Aleksey Nesterenko from the Yaroslavl region, Vasily Yushmanov from the Arkhangelsk region, Yury Prokopiev from the Krasnoyarsk region[a federal subject of Russia.] The mobilized Nikolay Novikov was killed two weeks after his wedding. On Jan. 12, he was still in Omsk, where he married his beloved before being deployed to the front, and on Feb. 1, he was killed at the front.
Some mobilized men die before they even reach the front. In one instance, in December, two soldiers from Chuvashia [Russia’s constituent republic] died from a drug overdose [during transit on a train.] One of them died of an overdose on the spot. His body was only discovered the following day because, during the night, the commanders were distracted by a knife fight in the adjacent train car. The second fell into a coma and died a few hours later in the hospital.
The mobilized men from the Irkutsk region who recorded several video messages are still in the Avdiivka area. For the third week, they have been hiding in the basement, shielding themselves from shelling by Ukrainian artillery. Their military IDs were stamped with the 117th Infantry Regiment of the so-called DPR [Donetsk People's Republic]. Despite their complaints, they are still being forced to participate in the offensive.
Alexander Burkov, Governor of the Omsk region, said that the mobilized soldiers of the 504th Tank Regiment were returned to service according to their military specialty, following his address to the Ministry of Defense. Earlier, the soldiers complained about the disbandment of the regiment, their transfer to the so-called “DPR Army,” and their conversion to motorized infantry.
A mobilized man allegedly shot another one in the Kursk region. Reports indicate that a 36-year-old soldier shot his 30-year-old comrade-in-arms in the head with a Kalashnikov assault rifle at a bus stop in the village of Bolshenizovtsevo. The shooter was apprehended later that day. At the time of writing, an investigation is underway, and the motive has yet to be established.
The Nizhny Novgorod Garrison Military Court sentenced a serviceman to 5 years in jail for abandoning his military unit without authorization. The press release of the court states that the defendant left his military unit without authorization on Nov. 21, 2022, returned home to his parents, and voluntarily presented himself to the military investigative office of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on Dec. 28.
Draftee Sergey Kulik from Saint Petersburg requested to initiate criminal proceedings against the commander who deployed him to the combat zone even though the court ruled the contrary. Sergey had been mobilized despite having an ill child and suffering from health conditions himself. Sergey’s family challenged the draft order in court. As a result, the court granted a provisional remedy, forbidding the commander to send Sergey to his duty station. However, the officer in command ignored the ruling of the court and did not return Sergey back home. Shortly after that, Sergey suffered an injury. His wife appealed to the military investigative department and demanded to press criminal charges against the commander of the military unit for failure to comply with the court order.
A second criminal case was opened against a 16-year-old schoolboy from the Leningrad region who was accused of trying to set fire to the draft office in the town of Kirovsk. Initially, the boy was accused of attempting to destroy property (Article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but then the prosecution moved to amend the charge to a more serious offense — an attempted terrorist attack. Moreover, the boy is now facing another charge of attempted arson of another draft office situated in the Krasnogvardeysky District of Saint Petersburg.
Russia’s Federal Security Service reported having prevented an arson attack on a draft office in the restricted-access town of Novouralsk. The agency claims that a 44-year-old man intended to set fire to the draft office using Molotov cocktails. The suspect was arrested, and criminal proceedings were commenced against him for planning a terrorist attack.
The court placed Aleksey Moskalyov under house arrest until Mar. 27. Now he will be able to pick up his daughter Masha from the orphanage. We wrote in detail about this case in our yesterday’s summary and the day before yesterday's summary.
After the announcement of mobilization, Russian courts began to massively grant exemptions from sentences to those sentenced to mandatory and corrective labor. To receive a deferral, only the convict’s consent to go to fight in Ukraine is required. Those detained for theft, battery, drug possession, drunk driving, or non-payment of alimony are becoming practically exempted from punishment.
The courts of the Zabaykalsky region considered 43 lawsuits against mobilization. Five of them were upheld, wholly or partially.
Some draftees are still not being paid salaries and are denied regional allowances. Their families have been begging for months for money from the command and officials and are providing the servicemen at their own expense.
Relatives of mobilized men from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region complained that the aid they sent them did not reach the servicemen. They believe that someone examines the food boxes, and the servicemen only get cereal and pasta, while the rest disappear from the parcels.
After the publication of the situation of Tatiana Mukovinina, an expecting mother from the Lipetsk region to whom the local social services suggested that she send her child to an orphanage while she stayed at the maternity ward, regional authorities decided to help her after all. The Governor of the Lipetsk region promised to grant her husband a leave so she could comfortably give birth to their second child.
A similar situation arose in the Kemerovo region where Novokuznetsk authorities suggested that a draftee’s pregnant wife place her children, aged 5 and 11, in an orphanage while she gives birth and goes through recovery. Her husband is at the front, and the family has no other relatives able to care for the children.
A Vladivostok secondary school has been renamed in honor of a Wagner Group mercenary killed in Ukraine. The man earlier fought in Donbas and Syria.
In Tyumen, authorities held a competition among the local vocational schools for the best heating stove for soldiers. Meanwhile, the Kuzbas Women’s Union weaved 100 square meters of camouflage netting for the front.