Russian mobilization news update by CIT volunteers, 13-14 November

More than 30 000 people (in Russia) have signed a petition demanding Putin sign an official decree ending the mobilization.

The deputy Defence Minister of Russia, Tatiana Shevtsova, announced that all conscripted Russian citizens will receive their December draft payments in full, around the 25th of December and well before the January due date. This will be done so that families of the conscripted personnel receive these payments before the NYE celebrations.

All Nizhny Novgorod government employees, who have signed contracts with the Russian Army or have been conscripted into military service (during the "partial" mobilization), will continue to receive an average wage. This is stated in the official decree signed by the region's governor, Gleb Nikitin.

The governor of the Irkutsk region, Igor Kobzev, has visited the Yurga military base in the Kemerovo region, where the conscripts from Ust-Kut are being held. He brought with him 60 boxes of "humanitarian aid". "Everything that the boys were asking for. First, it's warm clothes, food and tools and then portable radios, binoculars, torches and batteries" - the governor posted on his Telegram channel.

Conscripts keep complaining about their conditions and the gear they were issued at the Moscow regional draft center. They are not happy about the questionable quality of the bulletproof gear and the problems with delivery of the gear to the bases.

Verstka news channel released a recording of the conversation between a draftee from the Lipetsk region and his relative. The soldier, who is fighting near Svatove as part of the 362nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, is talking about heavy losses sustained by his regiment and some of the soldiers refusing to participate in the fighting.

A mobilized from a small settlement of Znamensk (Kaliningrad region) is currently deployed in the area of Svatove. He shared with his sister that 20 men survived out of 40. “They drink from puddles, they are constantly under fire. They don't know what to do''. The man was persuaded to sign a draft notice by “granting” him one day for arranging his personal affairs — to congratulate his wife on her birthday. In slightly more than a week he had already found himself in Ukraine and shortly after - at the frontline.

"Sibir.Realii" media outlet spoke to relatives and loved ones of around 30 residents of Primorye and Magadan who are fighting in the 155th Brigade. All of them were drafted on mobilization. Most of them have not gotten in touch since the end of October. We remind you that the marines of the 155th Brigade from the Primorsky region wrote an appeal to the governor of Primorye Oleg Kozhemyako because of the huge losses and the "incomprehensible offensive" in the Donetsk region. The governor later wrote that he contacted the commanders of the marines on the frontline: "The information about the fighting for Pavlivka is as follows: 'We are attacking hard. Yes, there are losses, but not that much'".

It became known that 4,035 people were mobilized in the Belgorod region. The regional government decided to calculate the necessary funds for payments and specified the number of conscripts.

In some regions, they continue to distribute summonses after the "end of mobilization". For example, in Ivanovo, summonses are delivered to citizens in their apartments and placed in mailboxes. The reason for summoning people to the military commissariat is not specified. In Udmurtia, summonses continued to be handed out even from November 1. According to the residents of the Karakulinsky district, draft board officers invited them for a "medical examination" and then asked them to sign a contract for military service. In Izhevsk, citizens were issued summonses "to clarify data for subsequent mobilization". Locals of Samara also reported summonses being given out. Earlier, a resident of Bataisk said that he came to the military commissariat on a summons after the end of mobilization. There he was registered as a volunteer.

Mothers of children with disabilities asked Putin to change the law so that their husbands would be exempt from mobilization. An appeal to the president was sent by parents of children with disabilities and parents with many children from the We Are Near association with 1500 members from different regions. They asked that fathers with three children or men with two children whose wives are pregnant to be exempt from mobilization. 9 mobilized fathers with many children from the Astrakhan region were returned to their families. Another 18 men with many children will soon be returned home, according to the governor of the region. In the Pskov region, the Prosecutor's office filed a complaint against the chairman of the Ostrovsky district mobilization commission, admitting that a local resident had been mobilized illegally. But no one has returned him home yet: the official was only told not to do this in the future. The Moscow Tsaritsyno draft office, which failed to send the mobilized with non-core military specialties to the war, issued them mobilization orders for the “second wave of mobilization”.

The wife of the mobilized soldier Sergey Saprykin talks about the difficult situation in which her family found themselves after September 24. The Saprykins are raising a six-year-old disabled child — the boy has severe epileptic seizures every day. Due to the fact that her husband is mobilized, the woman cannot even leave the house now because their son could have an attack at any moment. She notes that she applied to the governor of the Krasnodar Territory, the head of the Slavyansky district, the draft office, and the Ministry of Defense — she was turned down everywhere. In the Sverdlovsk region, 43-year-old Igor Kopylov was mobilized with hypertension — during physical exertion, his pressure rises to 220. Now he is near Svatove. A mother of two children from the Slobodo-Turinsky district of the Sverdlovsk region, whose husband was mobilized, had a problem with a boiler. She wrote to a State Duma [lower house of Russian parliament] member that the boiler was about to explode and asked to let her husband fix it. As a result, the authorities themselves arranged for the repair but the husband was never returned. A woman from St.Petersburg is trying to bring her mobilized husband back home — he is entitled to a draft exemption as a father of many children. According to Svetlana, the application with a request to cancel the draft was torn up in front of her husband.

Information on killed mobilized men continues to come. A mobilized resident of Kalmykia died in a training center near Volgograd. Stanislav Himalov, a resident of Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk region, born in 1987, mobilized at the end of September, was killed on November 4 near Svatove. Maksim Petrushechkin, a resident of Serov, Sverdlovsk region, born in 1981, mobilized in October, was killed on November 5. Victor Shishkin from Pachelma, Penza region, raised four children. Despite the prescribed exemption from the draft, he was mobilized at the end of September. On November 4, Viktor was killed from a fragment hit his head during a shelling near Enerhodar. According to the wife of the deceased, while her husband was alive, officials turned a blind eye to her complaints that Viktor should be returned home.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation shows videos not only of the preparation of mobilized soldiers, but also of their service on the front line. During training in the Khabarovsk region, draftees were mastering the operation of T-80BVM tanks and BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles. Another group of mobilized men completed an intensive combat course at a training center in the Stavropol region. Intensive combat training of crews of the Western Military District was taking place at Belarusian training grounds, while at a training ground in the Leningrad region, weapons training was held for draftees. In the “special operation” area, mobilized soldiers serve as drivers and technicians; they transport munitions and food, and charge Uragan MLRS launchers. A concert for mobilized soldiers took place in the Vladimir region. Trains with draftees went from Transbaikalia to the “special military operation” area.

In Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Kirill Ryabinin, a student, is going to be sent to war. The university's order for his enrollment was issued a week after his mobilization.

The Military commissar injured in the shooting incident at the Ust-Ilimsk enlistment office was discharged from hospital.

Rosfinmonitoring (officially: the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation) added Elena Sharova, 60, to the list of “terrorists and extremists”. It is assumed that on the evening of October 28, Elena threw two Molotov cocktails at the building of the Kemerovo military enlistment office, but did not hit it: only a small area in front of it caught fire. There was no official report made by law enforcement on the criminal case for arson of the Kemerovo military enlistment office.

The mobilized from Novosibirsk were presented with prayer books, and the local archpriest baptized 55 of them. Church sacraments for them “are free of charge” with the blessing of Metropolitan Nikodim of Novosibirsk and Berdsk. Volunteers from the Pskov region reported that they had collected aid for the military, the mobilized and the Berislav area citizens. Recall that the Russian troops left the Berislav region during the retreat to the left bank of the Dnipro. And a pensioner from Orel was hospitalized after she found socks knitted for soldiers by herself on sale on the market. Kindergarten pupils in Yamal packed humanitarian cargo for mobilized.