mobilization briefs
November 30, 2022

Mobilization in Russia for November 28-29, volunteer summary

According to Igor Trunov, Chairman of the Union of Lawyers of Russia, attorneys are on the list of professionals to be exempt from the mobilization. According to human rights attorney Pavel Chikov, this is highly unlikely. It is not excluded, however, that there may be informal instructions not to call up certain lawyers to the war. The fact is that the Union of Lawyers has not yet decided who will administer the exemption program. Law offices often do not have an HR department, and attorneys work without a regular set of paperwork that usually proves the status of an employee.

The Council of Mothers and Wives published a response letter by the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. The Council requested to establish a public interest organization to monitor the mobilization in Russia. The Commissioner for Human Rights forwarded this request to the Ministry of Defense and said that his office would keep the issue under control.

The Governor of St. Petersburg met with the families of service members deployed in Ukraine and promised to create a public board with their participation. In the same way as at Putin's meeting with the "mothers of soldiers", only women affiliated with the administration were invited to the meeting, including the wife of a state official and authors of patriotic lessons for children.

On the morning of November 28, the last battalion of draftees from Yaroslavl left the city. Now they will be transported to a military unit in the Moscow region for more combat training.

The criminal case against former heads of the Sverdlovsk Ministry of State Property has taken an unexpected turn. At the stage of familiarization with the materials of the criminal case, according to the 66.RU online news outlet, Alexey Pyankov, the former minister who was the main suspect, was called up to fight in Ukraine. Now police officers are investigating the circumstances of his mobilization. In Pskov, a resident was mobilized despite being on sick leave. He is now advised to appeal this decision in court. The man is unlikely to be able to take advantage of this advice, as he is currently in the combat zone. Kirill Berezin, a resident of St. Petersburg, who refused to take up arms and left a military unit, can now be sent to Ukraine: he has lost his court case. Viktor Ryakkenen, 55, sues the Petrozavodsk military commissariat for illegal mobilization. He filed a lawsuit against the senior staff of the commissariat claiming that they violated his rights due to their failure to act according to law.

Alexey, a 43-year-old mobilized man from the Buryat village of Bagdarin, committed suicide. His body was found on the territory of a military unit in Ulan-Ude. His comrades-in-arms stated that the mobilized man "had problems with alcohol and his emotional state." The real story of what happened is being investigated by the police. It became known about the deaths of draftees from the Kursk region: Vladimir Konev and Yevgeny Krasnopivtsev. Governor of the Vladimir region Aleksandr Avdeev is aware of at least four deaths of mobilized soldiers from his region, and several more are being investigated.

From the basement where “refuseniks” are held in Zaitseve, the "LPR", soldiers are distributed to other military units. "Right now, almost all contract and mobilized servicemen have been taken to Khokhlovka and Alekseevka in the Belgorod region. They are offered to join rear units and promised not to be sent to the frontline anymore. There's almost no one left in the basement," relatives report.

The Belgorod region authorities presented the "Caring Together" project, which they now plan to implement in all schools of the region by the end of 2022. Officials claim to have worked out "scripts and checklists" that will be used to tell a child about the loss of her/his father.

Wives and sisters of mobilized signalmen from the 9th Company of the 3rd Battalion appealed to their fellow citizens to help raise money for thermal imagers, a diesel generator and a UAZ Bukhanka van. “Our husbands are asking us for help. The thing is, they’re not equipped with anything. Recently, at our own expense, we sent them walkie-talkies, binoculars and other necessary things,” wrote a relative of a mobilized soldier on her page on the VKontakte social network.

Russian soldiers from different regions of Russia, who are now in the combat zone, spoke about the shortage of food, uniforms and even weapons. Their relatives and friends are forced to collect “humanitarian aid” for them every two weeks so that they at least do not die of starvation. Those mobilized from the Zabaykalsky region had to repair tanks at their own expense. The serviceman said that all the tanks and armored personnel carriers they have had been assembled in the Soviet Union and they have to buy spare parts for them with the salary they receive. But the salary comes out of order: someone cannot even get 20,000 rubles, while others get 260,000. But they’ve spent all the money on spare parts for tanks.

The Military Prosecutor's Office of the Central Military District confirmed that  mobilized residents of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous region, who are in the training unit near Omsk, purchased diesel fuel with their personal funds to heat their places of residence, and found a violation in this. State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] member Maxim Ivanov submitted a list of 927 mobilized people who still have not received monetary allowances for October to the Military Prosecutor's Office.

In a kindergarten in Izhevsk, parents were offered to knit socks for participants of the “special military operation”. The problem of supplying mobilized soldiers with underwear has forced women to organize themselves into communities in which, among other things, they discuss fashion cuts of clothes, as well as the choice and colors of the fabrics used. Sewing clothes for military personnel is also done by students from the Kuznetsky Technical School of Service and Design named after V.A. Volkov. Officials in the Novosibirsk region held a reception day for the families of the mobilized. 52 appeals out of 102 were related to purchase of fuel and compensation for gas expenses.

The Russian Ministry of Defense showed "from a first person view" what the life of mobilized soldiers on the frontline looks like. "It's just like civilian life. Warm, nice, and cozy," mobilized soldier Vitaly summed up.

At the same time, another unit of the Russian army was abandoned near Svatove, Luhansk region. This time, the command left behind  mobilized soldiers from the Ulyanovsk region. More than 30 mobilized soldiers are living in the woods near the frontline – they are threatened with prosecution for refusing to go to the forward positions.

Journalists of the Ostorozhno Novosti [Beware the news] Telegram channel talked to 28-year-old Ilya, who, without medical education, was sent to Lyman with a medical platoon. At the front line, he was pulling out bodies of the wounded and dead from the trenches. Now Ilya is in the psychiatric ward of the Defense Ministry hospital near Moscow. He is going to be "cured" and sent back to the front. A mobilized Moscow resident, who cannot walk, was told to "adapt to serve with a leg injury" in a military unit. Now this man is serving in the Belgorod region in a unit near Valuiki.

Kazakhstan Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population Tamara Duisenova said that since the mobilization was announced in Russia, 400,000 Russians have arrived in Kazakhstan and slightly more than 320,000 have left the country.