Russian mobilization updates, November 9–10

The State Duma has passed the amendments to the Tax Code, exempting volunteer, mobilized, and professional soldiers fighting in Ukraine from personal income tax. Additionally, traveling allowances of employees who are sent on business trips to the occupied territories are also exempted.

Minister Maksut Shadaev said that the Russian Ministry of Digital Development will close the online service for submitting applications for exemptions from mobilization for employees of IT and telecom companies on November 16. He reported that 65 IT specialists were mistakenly mobilized and returned home after the Ministry of Defense intervened. "We still have a few cases to sort out manually," the minister added. For instance, an IT specialist from Moscow was conscripted and has been held in the training unit for 3 weeks, despite an official telegraphic message from the Minister of Digital Development of the Russian Federation that the man was exempted from service.

On November 10, the head of the Komi region Vladimir Uiba declared the completion of "activities related to conscription during the partial mobilization". 13 days have passed since Sergei Shoigu spoke about mobilization being complete.

Some 70 wives of Russian conscripts from Kursk and Voronezh regions arrived in Starobelsk (Russian occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine) in hope to rescue their loved ones. Yesterday we said they came to Valuyki (army base) to demand their husbands be pulled out from the front. They ultimately managed to get in touch with the CO of the 4th company, Andrei Volobuev, who told them that out of 200 draftees, only "something like 20 are left". Sirena news is saying (according to a female relative of one of the conscripts) that the men from Kursk have finally been brought back to the base. Now the HQ is considering whether to charge them with desertion.

Verstka media outlet has obtained video footage of the meeting between government representatives of the Kursk region and relatives of the new conscripts from Kursk. During the meeting, the head of the regional security committee Mihail Gorbunov and representatives of the Russian military legal department have told them that some 50 conscripts from Kursk have made their way from the front lines to the Starobelsk's commandant's office (Russian occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine). They will soon be transferred to Russia proper.

Vologda women also demanded their conscripted husbands be returned home. One Vologda woman, Elena Kuznetsova, released a video where she is saying that back in October new draftees were transferred to the Mulino training camp in the Nizhniy Novgorod region, where they were taken out to live fire exercises 4 times. She claims that on the 16th of October the men were shipped off to the territory of the (so-called) LPR where they were meant to secure (Russian army's) rear areas. (Instead) On the 1st of November they were driven to the front line and told to dig in. Then the shelling started. "The boys were caught in the middle of an artillery duel. They were shelled by both the Ukrainian forces and the Russian artillery's friendly fire," the women are saying.

Russian Rotonda news & media outlet was approached by the family members of two conscripts from the Leningrad region. They told the media outlet that their conscripted relatives have been abandoned in Ukraine in their trenches. They are cold and sick.

Relatives of conscripts from the Vladimir region petitioned Putin to interfere. In their video address, they're saying that their conscripted next of kin, from the Russian 346th motorized rifle regiment, were deceived and then sent into the combat zone. They had no training either. They turned up in the bushes near Svatove with no gear and the convoy with food and other "humanitarian" aid didn't make it. On the 5th of November, those who survived decided to walk back towards the Russian border, where they were discovered and detained at the commandant's office. In the office they were threatened with criminal charges for their complaints and then sent back to Svatove. Never to be heard from again.

Another video surfaced, which describes the conditions under which members of the 346th motorized rifle regiment are kept. "It's a mess in there and nobody knows anymore which company is depicted in the video". The footage shows some bushes near Svatove, the area where the most bitter fighting takes place. The conscripts are telling how they had to buy some tarpaulin to shelter from the rain (which didn't help). They built a table and some benches out of random timber. The sleeping arrangements are nine men to a dugout, mud everywhere, makeshift heaters and slum-like conditions. The wife of one of the conscripts tried to tell the governor of the Vladimir region about it all. She sent the recording over to him and others joined in, telling their own stories. But the authorities blocked all communication coming from this group. They ruled it contained "signs of information warfare".

The military commissar of the Vladimir Region Yuri Gusarov responded to the video address to the president recorded by relatives of mobilized soldiers: “The information in the video does not apply to the situation with our regiments. The video is taken, it looks like, by citizens who have abandoned their positions and are outside the premises of their military unit. In our units, there are weapons, body armor, clothing, water, and hot food. The Vladimir Region regularly supplies aid to the soldiers and stays in contact with the commanding officers.” The relatives of the conscripts are extremely outraged by the military commissar’s response: “I’m prepared to personally take the commissar by the hand and go together, like in Gone with the Wind, to see how things really work.”

The Idel.Realii Telegram channel told under what conditions the Tatarstan conscripts have to fight in Ukraine. Three of the relatives of the mobilized soldiers from Tatarstan confirmed that their loved ones are currently in Ukraine. They started to communicate with their parents and wives on November 8.

Residents of the Ulyanovsk Region complain in online comments to the governor Alexei Russkikh that “commanders are abandoning the mobilized men at the front” and that “there are no outfits”. Relatives who are trying to make the media and the authorities aware of the situation are being labeled as “fakes”.

Novgorod mothers called the video about the living conditions of the mobilized in Tver “staged”. In October, the Novgorod Region authorities published a clip where the conscripts happily throw a ball around and “send greetings from Tver”. Relatives and friends of the mobilized commented that they guys “are not being taught anything” and that “one of the helmets they were issued cracked after falling on the ground”. On November 8, the day when the governor Andrei Nikiin visited the mobilized Novgorod residents, the guys were herded to their rooms and forbade them from complaining about problems with the healthcare and combat training.

On November 12, the governor of the Orel Region Andrei Klychkov will visit the military unit where the mobilized complained about the low quality of the issued equipment (we wrote about it in one of our summaries) and will check whether the backpack that ripped in the video was supplied “by us or not”.

Families of the mobilized from Biysk (the Altai Krai region) complain about the lack of help to those sent to the Orenburg region. While the Altai Krai residents deployed at a training center in Omsk receive aid from their relatives and close ones on a weekly basis, delivering aid to Orenburg appears to be troublesome for the relatives because of the remoteness of the training center.

The mobilized keep getting captured and killed at the frontline. Munok Lubsanov from the Republic of Buryatiya (Buryat people national region in Russia), born in 1996, who had been mobilized on September 22, was killed at the frontline on October 28. A cross-country skiing children's coach Oleg Litovskikh, born in 1988, from Verkhotur’ye (the Sverdlovsk region) was killed on October 23. The next day, a 23 y.o. resident of the Sverdlovsk region Fazliddin Rakhimov and Alexey Mutin from Mikhaylovsk (the Stavropol krai region) were killed in action at the frontline. A mobilized soldier Andrey from Yaroslavl was captured just three days after he had arrived to the combat zone.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reports that the mobilized servicemen from the Stavropolskiy krai region have finished their combat training. And training is ongoing at a training ground in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk. The mobilized soldiers, who had received training in the Zabaykalskiy krai region, were seen out from Chita for the “special operation”, also the mobilized residents of the Kostroma, Vologda and Nizhny Novgorod regions set off there as well from Kostroma. The mayor of Ulan-Ude Igor Shutenkov came to see out the mobilized residents of the Republic of Buryatia (Buryat people national region in Russia). Another batch of the mobilized residents of Tyumen is about to be sent to war. After the official part, the men will be granted 40 minutes for a reunion with their relatives. And sending out of the mobilized citizens to the combat cohesion training areas took place in the Leningrad region.

The men, who had been mobilized in Novokuznetsk (the Kemerovo region), left approximately 1 thousand children at home. The mayor (of Novokuznetsk) refused to announce the precise quantity of the mobilized. And the Ministry of Labor of the Republic of Chuvashia (Chuvash people national region in Russia) reported that 1448 of the mobilized have children. Keep in mind that it was reported specifically the amount of families with children, i.e. the number of children definitely exceeds 1.5 thousand. The total number of the mobilized from the Republic of Chuvashia is about 2700, that means that more than half of them have children. Local parliament members from Novy Urengoy (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Nenets people national region in Russia) aim to become personal supervisors for the families of the mobilized.

A mobilized multi-children father from the Primorsky krai region is sought to be turned back home from the war by the locals. He is in Ukraine currently, without any prospects of him returning home so far. 31 specialists with exemptions were mobilized at the JSC Uralasbest enterprise and now they are sought to be turned back. A resident of Nizhny Novgorod Nina Sh. addressed the President's Administration because of the mobilization of her husband; the complaint was forwarded from the Administration to the Ministry of Defense and the regional government. Her husband suffers osteochondrosis and scoliosis, and also has problems with high blood pressure and regular headaches caused by pathological conditions of the spinal column. "The ombudsman for human rights is not designated to defend the mobilized", — this is the official response a wife of a mobilized resident of the Voronezh region has received, the man with the exacerbation of pancreatitis had already been sent to the frontline for two times (we've mentioned that mobilized soldier in the previous summary). The mother of a mobilized Tyumen resident seeks a determent for her only son. Nikita Karpov appealed stating that the service was contrary to his convictions, but the document was not accepted.

The media reported that a mobilized soldier from Almetyevsk escaped from a tank training ground in Kazan. However, the information about the escape was denied by the Central Military District. According to preliminary information, the mobilized soldier just got lost.

The FSB reported on the prevention of an attack on a draft office in Yekaterinburg. They have reportedly seized bottles of solvent and gasoline from a 47-year-old man. The FSB believes that he is “a supporter of organizations and movements recognized in the Russian Federation as terrorist and extremist.” Mikhail Stepanishchev, 36, from Tomsk, was detained for attempting to set fire to an advertisement on a stand at the entrance to a draft office. He told the TV2 Telegram channel that he just wanted to light a cigarette near the draft office. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation accused the Ukrainian special services of setting fire to draft offices in Russia.

Uray entrepreneurs sent 20 tons of peat briquettes to the Omsk training center for heating tents. Earlier, mobilized Ugra residents recorded a video message to the head of the region, where they complained that they had to buy fuel for heating tents with their own money. A man handed over 15 kg of garlic and hand-made adjika sauce to the public reception of United Russia [Putin’s political party] in Orel for soldiers. Alexandra Glushchenko-Tokmina, confectioner from the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, decided to organize a master class on cooking gingerbread for the mobilized.

The Sota Telegram channel obtained Sberbank’s internal statistics, showing the distribution of the bank’s clients who left after the mobilization by country. The statistics were collected based on registered logins to the website and mobile application by IP addresses. If later the IP address was again registered as Russian, such a client was considered to have returned. The statistics show that the majority of the bank's clients do not believe the statement about the end of mobilization: no more than half of the citizens returned.

In Buryatia, students of the East Siberian Institute of Culture were given questionnaires by the Ulan-Ude mayor's office about possible protests and attitudes towards mobilization.

In Yelan, a group of mobilized soldiers is fighting the alcoholism of their colleagues. Mikhail Zhikharev, initiator of the campaign who was removed from command of the company, told the details about what had happened.

A resident of Vladimir filed a lawsuit against the FSB and a draft office. He disputes the ban on leaving the country imposed because of the mobilization.