Russian mobilization news update by CIT volunteers, November 8-9

The Russian parliament will vote on a bill which will exempt parents with four children (up to 18 years old) from mobilization. Current Russian legislation allows exemption of fathers with four children of up to 16 years old.

During constant assaults near Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, more than 200 soldiers were killed from a battalion fully made up of new Russian conscripts, one of the men told the DOXA channel. It's the 3rd battalion of the Russian 752nd motorized rifle regiment, members of which went through basic training at the Valuyki camp, in the Belgorod region. COs use them as "cannon fodder" to reveal the enemy's firing positions.

19 conscripts from the Moscow Region aged from 21 to 47 are being detained in a basement in Zaytseve. They are assigned to the 423rd Yampol Regiment. After they refused to return to the frontline without weapons, equipment, or commanding officers, they were taken to Zaytseve from the town of Svatove. The publication Verstka initially posted their names but once the material was published, the relatives of the soldiers changed their minds and the personal data were removed. Earlier, Verstka wrote that at least 42 mobilized from Voronezh Region could already be in Zaytseve after being taken from Svatove. The publication ASTRA was able to expose at least 7 basements and illegal jails on the territories of the so-called LPR and DPR holding Russian conscripts who refused to fight.

“Ira, it’s all lies on TV!” The wife of the Voronezh conscript Pavel Sokolov told how her husband who suffers from chronic pancreatitis was dispatched to the front and how he changed his attitude towards the war after being involved in combat.

The Ostorozhno Novosti (Caution, the News!) Telegram channel talked to relatives of the mobilized who found themselves on Lyman axis and published a recording of one the soldiers talking to his brother on the phone (content warning: the conversation contains many expletives). Initially, the servicemen were promised that they would be assigned to guard the headquarters but in the end they were sent to the front. After they were unloaded at a location in a forest belt near Svatove, the commanding officers “waved their hand and left”, as one of the soldiers put it.

More than 20 relatives of the mobilized soldiers from Voronezh, Kursk, and Belgorod Regions gathered at the headquarters of the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division near the border town of Valuyki. They claim that their loved ones are walking from the village of Krasnorichenske in Luhansk Region towards Valuyki (the distance of 149 km) and demand that their unit brings them back to Russia’s territory or else their wives will go to the front to collect their husbands. Despite a nighttime promise to provide information on their husbands by 9:30am, nobody came out to the relatives in the morning. As one of the wives later told the Sirena Telegram channel, thanks to the families’ insistence, buses were finally dispatched to pick the men up and by the evening they will be already returned to Valuyki. In Primorski Region, the wife of one of the conscripts (who was detained in a basement in DPR for refusing to fight) was warned by the police that she is “discrediting” the Russian army.

The situation with the mobilized soldiers in Kazan who complained about the conditions they are serving under prompted the propagandist Vladimir Soloviev to express displeasure at such conscripts: “You say you don’t like your commander and you don’t like how they train you. And how did you yourself prepare? What did you personally do at training to be prepared for battle? Or do you think that everybody owes you something?”

Tatarstan authorities will pay 45.6 million rubles for equipping the locations in Kazan where the mobilized soldiers are stationed. According to the contract posted on the government procurement site, the tent camp on the territory of the Kazan tank academy will cost almost 39 million rubles and the housing site at the Kazan Expo center will cost about 6.7 million. The Portal company owned by the city council member Bulat Akhmetgaraev is doing the work. The deadline specified in the contract is December 20 (recall that the mobilization was declared over on October 28).

In Tyumen, at the expense of the budget, the authorities procured gear for mobilized soldiers, including sleeping bags, tourist mats, demi-season uniform, army boots, winter boots, hats, balaclava helmets, thermal underwear, raincoats, thermoses, knives, metal carbines, and tactical headphones. Prior to this, Governor Aleksandr Moor denied problems with the provisioning of soldiers. He did not name the amount spent.

When leaving for the war, mobilized soldiers had to throw away loads of expensive gear. A volunteer fighter told the Inkazan Telegram channel about this. It was explained by the fact that some of the gear was bought by the mobilized themselves, some was received from the Ministry of Defense and some  from volunteers, but the soldiers couldn’t not take it all with them.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation continues to report on military training for mobilized soldiers. In the Amur region, the mobilized soldiers were sent for additional training to training centers “with a smile on their faces and fire in their eyes.” At the same time, intensive training of mobilized reconnaissance officers took place in the Novosibirsk region. At one of the training grounds of the Southern Military District, the combat training of mobilized soldiers continued. Combat training was also carried out at the training ground of the Western Military District in the rear area of the “special operation” zone, in Elan, and at the training ground of the Northern Fleet. In the Leningrad region, training of mobilized tankers continued. Mobilized soldiers from Yamal showed how training was carried out at the training ground in Tyumen. Mobilized soldiers from the Volgograd region were sent to the sites of operational coordination, and mobilized soldiers from the Tver region were sent to the “special operation” zone.

Booklets are handed out to mobilized Russians during exercises. The memo “Techniques for Neutralizing Fascist Influence”, according to the Ministry of Defense, is designed to protect people who are being trained for war in Ukraine. The unnamed authors want to teach Russian men how to counter “information attacks,” rely solely on Russian official sources, and use some conspiracy-thinking skills.

As was reported yesterday, on November 7, a queue of ambulances lined up at the railway station in Voronezh. As it turned out, they met not the wounded, but a train with 174 residents of the Kherson region who needed special help and care. They will be placed in regional nursing homes for the elderly and disabled, geriatric centers and rehabilitation centers for minors.

Reports on the deaths of the mobilized continue to arrive. Private Nikita Besedin from the Voronezh region, born in 1993, was mobilized on September 23 and was killed in Ukraine a month later on October 22. Mobilized Inal Tasoev from the Chelyabinsk region, born in 1987, was mobilized on October 6 and was killed on October 24. Anatoly Pesterev, 48, from Buryatia, mobilized on September 22, was killed on October 19.

In Severouralsk in the Sverdlovsk region, mourning for the perished mobilized soldiers was announced. Days of grief — November 9, 10 and 11 — were declared by the municipal administration. All entertainment events were canceled in the district.

In the Republic of Buryatia (Buryat people national region in Russia) a host for the funeral of the participants of the war in Ukraine could not be found, though a former clowness Businka (Bead) used to be the host earlier. As it is said on the public procurement website, the local "Center of culture and leisure" has canceled the purchase tender for undisclosed reasons. It was supposed to spend 156,5 thousand roubles in total: 24 ceremonies, for each of which the host was to get 6,5 thousand roubles.

A retiree Tatyana Funk from Chany in the Novosibirsk region established a workshop for sewing balaclavas for the participants of "the special military operation" at the residential building where she lives. Together with her neighbors she has sewn around one thousand balaclavas during one month and has already shipped the first batch to the frontline. A company from Tyumen, which used to produce all-terrain vehicles, started to make bulletproof vests. The construction of another workshop for producing the vests has already been scheduled for next year. Slavyanka clothing company will donate 500 winter sleeping bags to the Pskov residents on military service in "the special military operation" area.

A mother of a mobilized soldier from the Moscow region claimed that he hadn't received the 200 thousand rubles payment promised by the regional authorities.

A 27 y.o. Saint Petersburg resident tries to leave Russia through the decision by the district court of the Vyborg district of Saint Petersburg. The "partial" mobilization bypassed the man, but he was denied in leaving the country for three times by the Federal Border Service officers at the border.

In the Privolzhsky district, draft office employees tried to hand over an improperly drawn draft notice (without the military commissar's signature, without a wet stamp and with a misspelled name) to a man. That man empowered an attorney to present his interests in order to not to attend the draft office by himself. The attorney filed a complaint about the inappropriate form of the draft notice and sent it personally to the Garrison Military Prosecutor's Office and by registered letters to the regional military commissariat, the Regional Prosecutor's Office, and the City District Prosecutor's Office. As a result, the notice was canceled.

Maksim Ivanov, who was drafted into the Russian Armed Forces on September 24, asked to cancel the decision on his mobilization because he works at the "Rheostat" plant in Velikie Luki, which participates in the performance of tasks of the state defense order. Its employees are entitled to deferment of mobilization.

Avtozak LIVE Telegram channel with The Moscow Times news outlet summarized the results of attacks on draft boards and administrative buildings on the territory of Russia. Since February 24, the media, the Investigative Committee, and the Federal Security Service of Russia reported 68 arson attacks on military commissariats, administration buildings, city halls, offices of the United Russia Party, and two cases of shootings in military commissariats. Arson and shootings were recorded in 42 regions of Russia out of 85. Most often, the attacks occurred in small towns and less often in regional centers. Most of the attacks occurred in the Moscow (seven) and Volgograd (six) regions.