Volunteer summary on mobilization in Russia for November 3–4
Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that 318 thousand men had been mobilized in Russia, 49 thousand of them already on combat missions. The flow of volunteers to the RuAF doesn’t stop, that’s why the number of the mobilized has exceeded 300,000 already, explained the president. Beyond that, the Russian president has signed a bill on November 4, according to which citizens with uncleared or unremoved criminal records related to some serious crimes can be recruited for military duty during mobilization. Also a bill has been signed defining the status of volunteer units that are assisting the RuAF, and their members. And on November 3 Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the decree establishing a lump-sum payment of 195 thousand roubles to contract soldiers and the mobilized soldiers. It is stated in the decree that the lump-sum payment is meant for “the servicemen, who carry out their military service under contract” and “applies to legal relations arising since September 21, 2022”.
The authorities of the Oryol region will pay 50,000 RUB to families of mobilized soldiers, said Andrey Klychkov, the Governor of the region. Earlier, he stated that one-off payments from the region are “an easy way”, and after such payments there would be no funds to meet the needs of drafted soldiers. Mobilized residents of Nizhny Novgorod and their families will also be paid 50,000 RUB in addition to the federal payment - this decision was made by Gleb Nikitin, the Head of the region .
Payments to mobilized soldiers and their families in Russia, including compensation in case of injury or death, over the next six months will total from 900 billion to 3 trillion rubles. Such calculations were given to Reuters by Dmitry Polevoy, the investment director of Loko-Invest Company.
Almost 2,000 mobilized soldiers from Chuvashia, who have been taking part in protests for several days, were sent home for a 2-days leave. According to the Serditaya Chuvashia [Angry Chuvashia] Telegram channel, a delegation from Moscow, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region, representatives of the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor's office came to the military unit where the soldiers are deployed.
The governor of the Kemerovo region visited a military unit in Yurga, where a fight recently broke out between mobilized and contracted soldiers. He stated that the mobilized are now forbidden to leave the unit. Previously, they left the unit to buy alcohol in the town.
The Insider [an independent online publication specializing in investigative journalism] has obtained a conversation between the military police and mobilized soldiers from the 252nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, who refused to fight and walked to the border. In this conversation, the mobilized soldiers are indignant that they were “told to their faces” that they would leave the region only in “zinc coffins”: “Do we have any rights at all? They want to separate us from our families and “send us to death”. Then other mobilized men will be brought here later.” The Sirena Telegram channel talked with the sister of one of the draftees. She said that she had sent appeals to the Voronezh garrison court, to the Presidential Executive Office, to the Military Prosecutor - there were no answers. The soldiers had to live in trenches, in tents made of stretch film, with no capability to wash. The whereabouts of the soldiers is currently unknown. In one of the latest videos recorded yesterday, they are asking for legal assistance.
The drunken rampage by a group of conscripts from North Ossetia that happened in the Zaporizhzhia Region and that we wrote about yesterday angered the regional head Sergei Menyaylo. He promised to punish the soldiers who assaulted Russian servicemen and a local resident and also killed several farm animals.
Conscripts from Tomsk were dispatched to the front with minimal preparation. While at training camp, instead of the actual training, they were acting in propaganda clips for the state TV channels, scavenging wild mushrooms in the nearby forest out of boredom, and begging officers for self-study materials. Currently, the mobilized soldiers from the 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade, Tomsk conscripts among them, remain at the front line having suffered significant casualties from artillery fire. Some of the men refuse to return to their units afraid of military prosecution and of being ordered into a new offensive.
Hundreds of conscripts were forced to sleep directly on the marching ground near Simferopol: they had to search for pallets to avoid lying on the asphalt. Workers at one of the Sevastopol garment factories have taken initiative to sew thermal underwear for the mobilized soldiers.
Dmitrii Fedoseev, a Blagoveschensk resident, was mobilized despite suffering from medical conditions that put him into the D category (completely unsuitable for military service). The man could be dispatched to war already this Sunday. Artur Barinov, 31, a father of three children (aged 4, 7, and 8) from Velikie Luki, was mobilized. The draft commission is not letting him go home and a local official recommends that he files a suit. A 39-year-old Voronezh resident has already been sent to the front in Ukraine twice despite suffering an episode of pancreatitis. For five days after making his way out of an encirclement, the man roamed the woods in the Luhansk Region with severe stomach pains. When he found a military office, he walked in and asked for medical help but was sent back to war instead. An Amur Region man was drafted despite suffering from thrombosis, pneumonia, and loss of use of a finger due to torn ligaments. His relatives state that despite being sick, the man is scheduled to be sent to the front on November 6. Aleksander Smaznov, a resident of Novgorod Region who was denied a military contract in 2016 because of hepatitis C diagnosis, was mobilized on October 11 without undergoing a medical screening. All attempts to return home the only PE teacher from a district school in the Pskov Region have so far failed. The Pskov Region governor Mikhail Vedernikov cited the man’s case as an example when he was asking the draft boards to “not sweep up everyone who comes across.”
The Ministry of Defense continues to report on how mobilized soldiers are being prepared to fight. This time, there are posts about artillery training at the Northern Fleet training ground, first aid classes in Buryatia, small arms training in the Stavropol region, and military training in the Orenburg and Ulyanovsk regions. Additionally, the MoD posted a video from the Volgograd region showing mobilized soldiers undergoing a physical examination along with receiving uniforms and gear.
The Frunzensky District Court of Vladimir dismissed a lawsuit filed by a local resident Nikita Pribylov to challenge his mobilization. He was sent to fight in Ukraine without a medical examination. The Vyaznikovsky District Court of the Vladimir region also dismissed a lawsuit filed by Nikita Khvatov challenging a decision of a military commissariat and a draft board to call him up to the war. The text of the decision is not yet available on the court's website. The Military Court of the Petrozavodsk garrison dismissed a case filed by Viktor Ryakkenen, a 55-year-old mobilized resident of Karelia. The man with no combat or army experience remains in a military unit in the Leningrad region.
At the end of September, the Investigative Committee filed the first criminal case in Russia on evading mobilization. 32-year-old resident of the Penza region Maxim Moiseev, former ambulance driver and father of two children, was accused of refusing to take a draft notice and go to a draft office. The man was kept in a temporary detention center for two days, but, as human rights advocates predicted, the investigation soon stopped: the prosecutor's office declared the decision to file a case illegal, and the head of the regional department of the Investigative Committee faced disciplinary action. Mediazona spoke with Moiseev about hours-long interrogations, threats from investigators, and the return to his family.
Yuri Ivanov, mobilized from the Kaliningrad region, was killed on the territory of the "LPR" on October 25. A day earlier, Ilya Linnik, mobilized from Revda, Sverdlovsk region, was killed there as well. On October 24, Alexander Tevyanov, mobilized from Volgograd, was killed. On October 31, lieutenant colonel of the Federal Penitentiary Service Gennady Smirnov, who was conscripted during the “partial” mobilization, was buried near Volgograd.
According to the Astra Telegram channel, there are 1,020,233 people in the list of persons meeting the mobilization criteria, who can be checked for “cooperation with foreigners” upon their return to the Russian Federation. On November 3, the FSB border service received instructions on working with citizens returning to the Russian Federation. Now, those who left the country for some period (and are of an age suitable for mobilization) can be interviewed upon returning to the Russian Federation in order to clarify information about their stay abroad. In particular, they may be asked the following questions, “Have they cooperated with foreign persons, have they received offers to cooperate”, etc. Due to the military commissariat's ban on going abroad, Karelian sailors were left without work.
State Duma Deputy General Andrey Gurulyov hints at the possibility of using conscripts in combat in the future.