mobilization briefs
October 16, 2022

Volunteer summary of mobilization in the Russian Federation for October 14-15

The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation sent a petition to the government for a deferment from "partial" mobilization for school teachers. This looks especially relevant taking into account the information about the death of a mobilized school teacher from St. Petersburg – he was killed in Ukraine on October 5.

Four more mobilized were killed in Ukraine. According to the Krasnoyarsk publication Vzglyad.Info, these were residents of the city of Minusinsk and the village of Zeleny Bor. The men were sent "for training" on September 26, a week later they were at the front. On October 5 and 7, the mobilized were killed. The youngest of them, Alexander Pomigalov was 23. He completed his military service in 2020. 27-year-old Igor Puchkov was married and had two young sons. Alexander Parilov, 35, had a wife and two children. In the Chelyabinsk region, two killed mobilized were buried. Anton Korkin and Timur Akhmetshin were mobilized on September 27, and on October 13 they were killed in the Donetsk region.

The military commissar [head of enlistment office] of several regions of Primorsky Krai Roman Malyk was found dead. His body was found late on October 14 near the fence. Police are considering murder and suicide. On October 8, in Bashkiria, an unknown person set on fire a building housing a draft office, a department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a magistrate court, a notary, and a state technical supervision. As a result, a table, chairs and equipment in the local "military registration desk" burned down. In Votkinsk (Udmurtia) at night, unknown people also tried to set a draft office on fire. In Tomsk, a fire broke out in the building of a draft office on the Moskovsky Trakt. The Russian National Guard has strengthened the security of draft offices "taking into account the increasing incidence of attacks", deputy Alexander Khinshtein said.

In Krasnodar, the authorities plan to mobilize at least a thousand people by December 2022. This follows from the contract for the catering to the mobilized, which is published on the government procurement website. Catering must be organized at the regional military commissariat from October 11 to December 23. We would like to recall that yesterday President Putin announced the end of mobilization within two weeks. One meal for a person costs about 100 rubles under the contract.

For the first time in several years, a rally of Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [a right-wing populist and ultranationalist party] has been permitted in Lipetsk. The event is planned "in support of the Russian army, as well as against mistakes during partial mobilization."

In Moscow, traffic police officers are now involved in mobilization activities. They stop some of the cars on Volgogradsky Prospekt near the intersection with the Moscow Ring Road, after which people without uniforms approach those sitting in cars to clarify the data and serve draft notices.

In Moscow and the Moscow region, raids on men of military age continue, despite criticism from officials and refutations from military commissars. During a raid in Moscow, an IT specialist having draft exemption was taken to a military base near Nizhny Novgorod. Owners of Moscow hostels and hotels are required to provide information about male guests aged 18 to 55 years. It is reported that on October 14, after a raid at the Mitinsky radio market in Moscow, the police filled two buses with men and drove them away. At the exit from the Bibirevo subway station in Moscow, a draft notice was issued to a man with a broken arm.

Raids in dormitories are also carried on. The National Guard broke into a dormitory in Moscow, where surveyors and construction workers from St. Petersburg were staying. All were detained and taken to the Kuntsevo military commissariat, their IDs were taken away. After that, the young people were packed into a bus and taken to a collection point in the Patriot park near Moscow. On the way, one of them fainted, smashing the bus window with his head. One of those captured turned out to be Yuri Travkin from St. Petersburg. He told Sota media outlet that 12 people were being held with him. The military commissar refused to release the men, saying to their employer: "Then find me others." Travkin added that he was not against going to war, but only according to the legal procedure, without raids. Travkin also provided Sota with information about the other kidnapped persons staying with him.

Reportedly, the three Bashkortostan natives who were detained for 24 hours at the Danilov District draft office in Moscow were released under a promise that they would report back in two days.

Civil rights activist Dinar Idrisov warned last night that the draft authorities would start snatching men en masse as they exit their residential buildings. As of this morning, these round ups have already started. In particular, the military police are knocking on doors on Revolution Avenue. At one apartment complex, the head of the residential board helps them open doors. Also in St. Petersburg, international passport applicants are greeted with military summons. The head of one of the city’s districts protested the use of the term “round up” and claimed that the authorities are conducting a “notification” campaign. 150 enterprises in the St. Petersburg submitted proposals regarding mobilization of their employees to the enlistment office including lists of their essential personnel. Decisions on the mobilization of employees working for businesses who have not filed such proposals will be made by the draft board itself.

The news portal Meduza recounts how Moscow and St. Petersburg residents are being tracked down, mobilized, and dispatched to the front. “They need to make the quota. It is easier at the expense of those who do not resist.”

In Moscow, summons are served along with threats of criminal charges for not appearing before the draft board. A female nurse from Severouralsk who recently survived a stroke received a summons in spite of yesterday’s claim by the Ministry of Defense that women are not subject to mobilization. At the draft board, they explained that all junior medical personnel were sent notices to appear in order to keep their status up to date in the database. St. Petersburg female residents keep receiving summons as well. Anton Naryzhnev, an oil-industry worker from Noyabrsk (Yamal) was mobilized in spite of a spine fracture and eczema. He is currently at the Andreev training grounds in Tyumen petitioning for a medical examination and suing the draft board and the bureaucrats responsible for his mobilization. In the Kingisepp District, a sole worker at a small farm was mobilized leaving his pregnant wife to care for a 9-month-old baby and a herd of cows and bulls. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, summons were served to a wheelchair-bound disabled man. Fathers of three keep being called up despite them presumably being eligible for postponement of service. For example, a 57-year-old baker from Sverdlovsk Region who has three children is being mobilized. In St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Oleynikov, a 26-year-old metro employee, was mobilized in place of his namesake. The draft office, the district attorney, and the Petersburg government are all aware of the mistake but there are no plans to bring Aleksandr back from his military unit.

“Twenty out of a hundred remain alive”, writes the girlfriend of Valery Dmitriev who was mobilized on September 23 and reached the front as part of the infamous 27th Motorized Rifle Brigade.  A 21-year-old Vladimir Region resident was sent to war without papers. He is currently in the territory of the so-called LPR along with others mobilized from the region. A statement by the sister of one of the mobilized was published on the Vkontakte social network. Her brother was called up on September 24 and already on September 28 was dispatched to the so-called DPR as part of the 102nd Motorized Rifle Regiment. The regiment was sent to the front after just two days of training. Notably, she writes that “the mobilized are not refusing to participate in the special military operation; they ask to be appropriately trained and provided with weapons that would allow them to enter their fight with the enemy at least on equal terms.”

Sending out the mobilized from regions is ongoing. The footage shows Vladimir region, Birobidzhan and Ivanovo region.

The Vladimir region authorities have handed over drones, Niva and UAZ automobiles to the mobilized from that region. And the conscripts, who were to be sent to the Kherson region within the 810th Marines Brigade from Sebastopol, were equipped with ragged bulletproof vests, ripped parts of which were duct taped in an attempt to fix it.

The mobilized from Anapa have complained that they had had to wait for regimentation for more than 24 hours because of the mess with papers. A mobilized from Yugra showed how they had been deployed in the vicinity of Omsk: slates on the ground so as not to drown in mud, one potbelly stove for 20 men and constant stealing of personal belongings.

The mobilized reservists from North Osetia claimed that they had been sent to Ukraine unequipped, without weapons or money. On the other hand, the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatar national region in Russia) supplies the mobilized with everything they need at the expense of the regional budget: thermal underwear, raincoats, chainsaws. Martial arts training courses will be organized for the mobilized in Kazan. As to the mobilized from the Republic of Tatarstan, they will be sent to the "Special Military Operaton" zone in several days.

Russian Senator Sergey Bezdenezhnykh (representative of the Khabarovsk region in the Federation Council, which is the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament) has requested the Khabarovsk region Governor Mikhail Degtyarev to cut down the number of feasts and banquets for at the same time the mobilized buy ammunition at their own expense. The Belgorod Governor commented on the reports that state employees were forced to clean up a military base. He described it as “an urgent assistance because of an accidental breakdown of the sewage system”. And a charity fair takes place in the Stanitsa Mar`yanskaya in the Krasnodar region in order to support the mobilized. The goods for it were provided by the local school students and their parents. Governor of the Tyumen region Aleksandr Moor decided to support the mobilized and sent to each of them a coin according to an old tradition. And in Saint Petersburg, manufacturing companies are forced to carry out the orders of the Ministry of Defense.

The residents of the Novosibirsk district complained about the shortage of passenger buses in operation, route №115 in particular. The regional Ministry of Transport explained it with the mobiliztaion. And in Shakhty in the Rostov region, school students, whose fathers were mobilized, will be granted a free pass for the public buses. The mobilization has also affected the work of the police as well. According to the Baza news outlet, the number of resignations of the Ministry of the Interior officers has significantly decreased after the announcement of the mobilization, and the previously resigned officers have started returning to police – all these are related to the reservation from mobilization for the MoI officers.

Synergy University [Moscow University for Industry and Finance] is suspected of selling certificates for draft deferment. One certificate cost about 180,000 rubles. Moreover, in order to evade mobilization, more than 800 people fictitiously got jobs at Synergy University. On October 15, searches were carried out at the university, and a criminal inquiry was opened.

A court dismissed a claim of a mobilized resident of Rybinsk, who challenged the decision to draft him. The complainant tried to challenge the procedure for conducting a medical examination by a military commission. He also pointed out that the military recruitment office did not take into account his marital status. Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, published a story of a mobilized man who is struggling for a transfer to an alternative service. A court in Krasnoturinsk refused a mobilized man to perform alternative service. However, in Saratov, the mobilization was canceled for a man who applied for alternative service.

Radio Liberty [or Radio Free Europe, a United States government funded organization], together with CIT analysts, studied several videos with Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine, where the POWs themselves or the authors of these videos claim that they got to the front as a result of “partial” mobilization. It turned out that some of the POWs were ordinary contract soldiers, and one of them was indeed mobilized, but in the spring he already fought in Ukraine of his own free will. Representing them as mobilized can be beneficial both to themselves, counting on a milder attitude of the Ukrainian Forces, as well as to Ukraine in order to undermine the morale of the Russian reservists.

Those who left their regions or the country to avoid mobilization will be located through their employers, said Oleg Kozhemyako, the Governor of Primorsky Krai. And the students of Omsk State University refused to issue and hand draft notices.

Two Moscow citizens became the first Russians to apply for asylum to Switzerland to avoid mobilization. Vadim Drozdov, a lawyer, told about this to Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper.

A St. Petersburg TV channel showed footage of a marriage ceremony for the mobilized men. 43 couples married at once. A mobilization assignment has become one of the good reasons for a fast-track registration of marriage. In particular, Registry offices of Mari El, Amur, and Tuva regions announced their readiness to register marriages of mobilized soldiers and their brides under an accelerated procedure.