mobilization briefs
October 15, 2022

Volunteer summary of mobilization in the Russian Federation for October 13-14

Putin has made an announcement that the "partial mobilization will be over within the next two weeks". He also said that at this point in time 222 000 citizens have been drafted, of the 300 000 originally planned, and 16 000 are already taking part in the fighting. All drafted personnel will be trained.

Russia's Defense Ministry stated that women have not been conscripted at this stage in the process (of the "partial mobilization") and there are no plans to draft them in the future.

Despite all previous statements from the Russian Defense Ministry and the Press Secretary Peskov, chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan, Farid Mukhametshin, said that the constituent republic "has met all of the first wave mobilization quotas" which were designated by the central government. It's worth mentioning that this statement was later removed from the majority of official news reels.

"Our goal is to draft only those with previous military experience, however not everybody has it, therefore lack of the aforementioned experience is not the basis for draft exemption." said Perm's military commissar [head of enlistment office], Alexandr Kokovkin, during his live interview, when he attempted to outline the Defense Ministry draft selection criteria.

Some 700 conscripts were sent back home from the Elan basic camp (near Yekaterinburg). 300 of them were returned because they were conscripted unlawfully. This substandard performance of the conscription offices in the Sverdlovsk region raised the feelings of righteous indignation. in the State Duma member, Maxim Ivanov. He blamed the officers, who value quantity over quality, for such a bad job.

A public servant, member of the Moscow mayor's office, was killed in the fighting in Ukraine. The 28-year-old Aleksei Martynov headed a department in the Moscow government structure. He was drafted on the 23rd of September and died on 10th of October. With this news in the background, sources in the Moscow government report a mass exodus of the mayor's office workforce. "They are all taking off and just leaving notes in their desk drawers. IT workers, marketing people, PR personnel and the rest of the office staff. This is an actual mass exodus.

More news is coming about the conscripts being killed on the battlefields in Ukraine. Three draftees from Kezhemsky and Boguchansky Districts of the Krasnoyarsk region. Andrei Shilyaev, a draftee from the Sverdlovsk region, recently conscripted in Severouralsk was killed in the fighting. First official news appeared of a draftee from Buryatia killed in action, the 39-year-old Andrei Pichuev. The wife of Timur Ahmetshin, a conscript from Chelyabinsk, who was also recently killed in Ukraine, thinks her husband was shipped off to war without any sort of training.

In the Novosibirsk Higher Military Command School, where two mobilized soldiers died, a Novosibirsk ombudsman did not find any violations. Tatyana Merzlyakova, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Sverdlovsk Region, claimed that those mobilized from the Sverdlovsk Region are being sent to the Lugansk Region "for training." Moreover, she says that she still does not have accurate data on the fate of Yevgeny Bizyaev.

Wives of mobilized men began to receive the first salaries of their husbands, now payments for September are being made. In the Penza region, from 3 to 5 thousand rubles were paid, and in the YaNAO [the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District] there are more modest amounts, for example, a resident of Novy Urengoy received 792 rubles. The spouses of the mobilized residents of the Volgograd region sent an appeal letter to a military prosecutor's office after their husbands were told the amount of payments for the time spent in the training center. According to one of the spouses of the mobilized, they were promised to pay about 6,000 rubles in 2 weeks. Moreover, taxes will be withheld from this amount. And the authorities of Gusev, Kaliningrad region, gave firewood to the families of the mobilized men and promised to chop them.

Judging by a list of supplies required for mobilized soldiers made by volunteers that appeared online, there is no supply as needed in the Novosibirsk Region from the Russian Ministry of Defense. And in Divnogorsk, Krasnoyarsk region, the administration organized a “Warm Thanks” campaign, in which pensioners are knitting socks for the mobilized soldiers. In the Belgorod region, public sector workers are “volunteeredto clean a military unit.

DOXA Magazine [a Russian online student magazine] reports that a son of the deceased journalist Irina Slavina, who has not served, was mobilized in Nizhny Novgorod. In Moscow, Ivan Usynkin, a 30-year-old mentally challenged graduate of an orphanage, who has not served, was mobilized. Now the man is in a military unit of Mulino. In the Ivanovo region, a single father was mobilized. Dmitry Basov from Rodniki was drafted on September 23. Now he is in Ivanovo, in the 98th Airborne Division. In St. Petersburg, a 44-year-old local resident was mobilized after traffic police officers stopped his car and took him to a military recruitment office. A father of three minor children was also mobilized there; the man, at the same time, had a reservation from his employer. In the meantime, officials insist that the mobilization of men with three minor children has been canceled. This time, this was reported by Alexander Khinshtein, a Deputy of the State Duma [the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights.

Authorities continue raids on men in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Police officers and men without uniforms block entrance halls of apartment buildings. It is almost impossible to leave the house without receiving a summons. In Moscow, raids are carried out near subway stations and at work places. Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit [We Can Explain] reports that 80 employees of MIPSTROY1 construction company do not answer their phones after a night raid in a dormitory by military commissariat employees. More than 200 people were detained, 80 of them did not return home. In Moscow, workers of an office and storage building in the Altufyevo district were brought to a military commissariat. In the morning, the entrance to the building was blocked by the National Guard. The servicemen went through all the floors, detained the men, put them on a bus to hand out summonses, and took them to the military commissariat. And in the Danilovsky district of Moscow, at least 12 men, who were forcibly taken from hostels, are being held at the military commissariat. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, is now convinced that reports on raids are real. He spoke to an employee of the Moscow City Telephone Network and his supervisor, who complained about a raid on draft dodgers at the Shchelkovskaya subway station in Moscow. Senator Klishas commented on the distribution of call-up papers at subway stations in the capital: "Each message must be checked and, if confirmed, the actions of officials who authorized such raids should be legally assessed." He also explained why this practice is illegal. However, the Moscow military commissariat in a comment to Russian official media RIA Novosti denies the practice of distributing call-up papers near subway stations. The administration of St. Petersburg confirmed to RBK that military commissariat employees and police officers began to appear at the entrances of residential buildings. According to public officials, these are “information groups”. State Duma deputy and ex-governor of the Ulyanovsk region Sergey Morozov proposed to shoot officers who send the mobilized to the front line without training. Press Secretary for President Putin Dmitry Peskov commented on the raids on people during the mobilization: "Do not be afraid to walk around Moscow, we need to ask the Prosecutor General's Office a question."

At a regional draft commission meeting, the Pskov region governor Mikhail Vedernikov urged to avoid "raking out everyone within reach" during the mobilization. According to him, the negative effect on the economy must be eliminated.

Following the outpatients clinics lead, draft notices are being handed out at a hospital's exits. A case took place in Lyubertsy near Moscow.

In Moscow, the CEO and five other employees of the IT company RDL Telecom Inc. were sent to the Lefortovo military enlistment office, despite an exemption provided by the Ministry of Digital Development. Only half of the mobilized with exemption were released during the proceedings.

A flight from Ufa to Antalya was delayed for 9 hours due to the mobilization of the co-pilot. The pilot received a draft notice earlier on, but did not show up at the military enlistment office and therefore got banned from leaving the country immediately before the flight.

17 professional football players in the Russian Federation received summonses. The numbers are even higher among football clubs employees, according to telegram channels.

Teachers in Vyborgsky district school were directed to stay in Russia, according to a source of Bumaga [Paper] independent media.

A mobilized from the Moscow region shared in an interview how the "combat coordination" is going on the training ground in Naro-Fominsk.

Relatives revealed that the mobilized in the Chita training center have to wash themselves pouring water from bottles.

A 52-year-old mobilized from Bashkiria suffered a heart attack during training at a military base in Saratov.

Five days - this is how long the military training of the mobilized takes in Kamenka military base, said conscript Andrey Buyuklyan from St. Petersburg. The mobilized are taken to the front after this.

The mobilized from Moscow in the Belgorod area are practically not trained to fight. They have been at a shooting range not more than three times from the start of the mobilization, no combat coordination at all, and some have already been sent to Ukraine. Moreover, the mobilized had been sleeping on the ground in the open air for several days, and nobody took care of their supply. The wife of a 42 y.o. mobilized man from Yegor`evsk in the Moscow region claimed that her husband was about to be deployed at the battlefront after two days of training — he was supposed to be in command of a tank crew. Eventually, a group of the mobilized refused to take part in the fighting without proper training and being instructed on how to handle the issued armored vehicles.

The mobilized from the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatars` national region in Russia) refuse to equip themselves at the expense of their families. The men tell that the mobilized from other cities are equipped through their governments and administrations, but in their native town Menzelinsk funds are raised forcibly through holding money from the state emplyees.

Military Prosecutor's office of the Mulino garrison will investigate the information that the mobilized in the garrison are forced to give away gear and fist-aid kits bought by them. Such insights had previously started to spread across social networks and had reached the Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Gleb Nikitin, who ordered to resolve the issue.

The mobilized were forced to sign refusals from medical examinations in draft offices in the Kemerovo region.

Moscow companies, assisting in applying for and acquiring of international passports, began to refuse  the clients who fall under the mobilization criteria. The limitation for a fast-track acquiring refers foremost to the men of the draft age under 50, who have military IDs.

The Moscow State University Professor Natalia Zubarevich estimates the outflow of Russian population caused by the “partial” mobilization to be approximately equal to 300,000 people.

Enforcement proceedings towards the accumulated debt of the mobilized residents are to be suspended in Udmurtia.

A draft office in Novosibirsk was “mined”, and another attempt of burning down a draft office occured in Udmurtia region.