Mobilization in Russia for November 29–30, volunteer summary
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported on the progress of the training of draftees. Shoigu claims that over 300,000 reservists drafted in the "partial" mobilization have received training at more than 100 training ranges in Russia and Belarus over the last two months. As a result, more than eight thousand tank crews, armored vehicle crews, artillery units, air defense and drone operators have completed their training.
As confirmation of the Minister of Defense's words, the Ministry's official Telegram channel continues to publish videos with mobilized soldiers. For example, intensive combat training of the mobilized continues at the ranges of the Southern Military District in the Rostov region. Together with artillerymen of the Southern Military District, the mobilized perform combat tasks as part of Akatsiya self-propelled gun crews. Mobilized soldiers from Stavropol have already left for the war zone.
The mobilization draft is over, but mobilization continues. This was reported on the hotline (122) of the Ministry of Defense, "The president announced that people will not be called up for mobilization for now. It is the drafting campaign that has ended." Authorities of the Orenburg region have allocated 1 million rubles for a "hotline" on mobilization, which has to work from December 15, 2022, to January 31, 2023. Another evidence of the continuation of mobilization is the refusal of the Ministry of Defense to discharge servicemen after the expiration of their contract. One more example is in an interview with a 30-year-old servicewoman Vera Antonova.
On Monday, the employees of the Chelyabinsk sugar refinery were handed draft notices through the management directly at the workplace with the demand to appear at the military commissariat on Thursday. The notices were given to residents of Belarus and Uzbekistan, ignoring the fact that they do not have Russian citizenship or even a residence permit. The father of two disabled teenagers was mobilized in Crimea. Despite the decree to return home, he is still in the combat zone.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not approve a law proposal to exempt Doctors of Sciences [the highest academic degree in Russia] and Candidates of Sciences [a lower than doctoral scientific degree in Russia, equivalent to PhD] from the draft. The proposal was put forward by the State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] Committee on Science and Higher Education. However, the Ministry did not think it was justifiable under the “guaranteed provision of the mobilization deployment of the RuAF".
For the first time, a mobilization order was ruled illegal by the Russian court system. The Gatchina City Court of the Leningrad region ruled in favor of a draftee and recognized his draft orders as invalid. Pavel Mushumansky had earlier served his time in the Army in an alternative civilian capacity instead of a military service. After the mobilization was announced, he was drafted and sent to an army base. Today, the court ruled in his favor.
A Just Russia — For Truth [social conservative and social-democratic party] delegate of the Sakhalin legislature was issued a fine. During the reservists' assembly he pronounced their mobilization illegal. The district court has fined the delegate, Tatos Mikoyan 30 thousand rubles for “defamation of the Russian Army”.
Draftees from Omsk, who are now located in Novokuznetsk, asked the city's mayor for some stoves. It's now 30 below zero in Siberia, and they have been housed in tents. The mayor, together with local business owners, has collected a few stoves and 10 tonnes of coal for them. The NGS news portal had a chat with the soldiers near their Koltsovo training ground and learnt how they survive in tents in 30 below zero. The Readovka pro-Russian Telegram channel revealed the day-to-day living of draftees from Elan, who said they were happy. "It's warm inside the tents, they feed us well, let us use a bathhouse, we have no desire to go back home, and glory to Russia!", the mobilized soldiers said.
Draftees from Serpukhov, Moscow region, who had complained in the video about being abandoned by their commanders, stopped answering their cell phones. Over the weekend, a new video showing volunteers who allegedly met with the soldiers and provided them with some necessities began to spread. After that, however, there was no news about these service members.
Relatives of mobilized Magnitogorsk residents who refused to go to the front line appealed to the prosecutor's office. These soldiers withdrew from their positions after they were shelled and abandoned by their commanders. Now, under the threats of prosecution for desertion and failure to execute orders, they are being coerced to return to the front line.
About 90 Russian draftees are being held in a former children’s camp in the village of Makarove, Luhansk region. This is the 12th known improvised prison for Russian refuseniks, which the ASTRA media outlet was able to identify. In addition, the media published a conversation of one of the mobilized soldiers held in the children’s camp with his relatives. Mikhail Nosov, the first draftee to be released from the basement in Zavitne Bazhannia, Donetsk region, was interviewed by ASTRA about the “partial” mobilization, dead bodies in the houses in which he had to stay, and the basements where he was held for refusing to fight.
Draftees assigned to the Tamanskaya Motorized Rifle Division stationed in Belarus complained that only 108 out of 480 battalion members had received payments for October. As one of the soldiers told the ASTRA media outlet, draftees cannot log into their personal servicemen accounts, because their data is not in the Alushta system [personnel system of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation].
Using government data and accounts from soldiers’ relatives, the Telegram channel It’s My City counted that as of the end of November, 50 mobilized men from the Sverdlovsk region were killed. Yevgeny Safin, 26, became the latest on the list. He came from the village of Polevskoe and was killed during a strike on the Luhansk axis.
A collection of warm clothes to be sent to Ukraine has started in Samara. An announcement that appeared in a local “Russian community” chat explained that “the medical unit is in urgent need of old warm clothes and blankets for padding vehicle floors and covering up the wounded during evacuation: they are freezing during transportation.”
In Olekminsk district of Yakutia, the families of mobilized soldiers were provided with ice. The Yakutia 24 TV channel dedicated an entire news report to this event. In Khakassia, the authorities will spend 60 thousand rubles to produce a New Year’s video greeting for the mobilized.
A bakery in Magnitogorsk started to produce dried bread for soldiers from Yuzhnouralsk. The first batch of them has already been delivered to the front. In the Moscow region, grandmothers of schoolchildren are being asked to knit socks, hats, and scarfs for the “special military operation” participants. Convicts in Vologda are already knitting socks and mittens for the mobilized. The knee pads made out of plastic bottles, infamous for causing the ire of the propagandist Vladimir Solovyev, are evidently being produced by schoolchildren in Astrakhan who, in addition to these gear items, are also sending their drawings to servicemen.
Owners and managers of several large Russian businesses spoke with the Financial Times publication about the mobilization. Several of the entrepreneurs think that had the private sector been entrusted with the mobilization, it would have been conducted more efficiently.