Mobilization in Russia for Oct. 14-15, 2024 CIT Volunteer Summary
Authorities and Legislation
The State Duma [lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia] has approved in the first reading a bill to toughen the punishment for armed rebellion, with penalties extending up to life imprisonment. More details on this bill, which was introduced by the federal government last July, can be found in our previous summary.
The Ministry of Defense has proposed granting combat veteran status to military personnel and volunteer fighters "repelling incursions into the Russian Federation and false flag attacks occurring on the federal border near the zone of the special military operation." The government would decide which territories should be included in this policy. This change is projected to cost 3.4 billion rubles [$35.48 million] between 2025 and 2027.
The federal government has endorsed a bill to provide free legal assistance to combat veterans and honorary donors.
Army Recruitment and Military Service Advertising
The Idite Lesom! [Flee through the woods/Get lost you all] Telegram channel has published a guide for conscripts and men with draft deferrals, explaining what to do if their local draft office is withholding their military ID or conscription registration certificate. The human rights advocates recommend submitting a written request for the return of these documents, keeping a copy for personal records, and requesting a receipt acknowledging the submission. If the draft office still refuses to return the documents, they advise to file a complaint with the Military Prosecutor's Office. Withholding such documents could be considered an abuse of power.
The Voyennye Advokaty [Military Lawyers] Telegram channel clarifies whether individual entrepreneurs are required to deliver draft notices to their employees and report them to draft offices. While all organizations are obligated to handle such matters, individual entrepreneurs are not legally considered organizations. Therefore, they are not required to submit military registration documents to draft offices or deliver draft notices.
In the Krasnodar region, the regional sign-up bonus for signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense has been increased from 1.2 million rubles [$12,500] to 1.5 million rubles [$15,700], according to Governor Veniamin Kondratyev. The official added that municipalities in the region provide an additional payment of 200,000-400,000 rubles [$2,180-4,170]. Thus, taking into account the national payment, one can receive up to 2.3 million rubles [$24,000] in the region. This latest increase in the sign-up bonus in the Krasnodar region is the fifth since the beginning of the year. The last increase occurred in early August.
The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, has reported a shortage of officials in the region due to their mass enrollment in the BARS-Belgorod volunteer unit. Gladkov shared his concern while mentioning that the first woman to join the unit was Galina Rudenko, head of the Krasnogvardeysky district. He also expressed hope that he would be able to negotiate a rotation of officials with the Ministry of Defense.
Governor of the Bryansk region Aleksandr Bogomaz has announced a plan to introduce payments for signing a contract with the BARS-Bryansk territorial defense volunteer unit. A one-time payment of 150,000 rubles [$1,570] will be made from the regional budget for a contract of six months, and 300,000 rubles [$3,130] for a contract of one year.
Mobilized Soldiers, Volunteer Fighters and Contract Soldiers
The list of mobilized soldiers killed in the war has been updated to include Yury Kuleshov, Andrey Andreyeschev and Vladimir Zhuravlyov from the Rostov region, Viktor Garavin from the Ivanovo region, as well as Pavel Romanov and Stepan Khromtsov from the Sverdlovsk region.
Sergey Shadrin, a completely deaf disabled person from Russia's constituent Republic of Udmurtia, has been deployed to the war. Being a former military man, Shadrin decided to enlist as a volunteer fighter and visited a draft office on multiple occasions, but was rejected due to health reasons. However, he was unexpectedly found fit for service and sent to a military unit. The family is unable to ascertain which unit he is currently serving in.
Sentences, Legal Proceedings and Incidents
In the town of Zhirnovsk, Volgograd region, a previously convicted war participant has been detained on suspicion of a double murder. As reported by the 7x7—Gorizontalnaya Rossiya [Horizontal Russia] news outlet, Yevgeny Kravchenko, who had returned from the war, had stabbed two young men, Yevgeny Klimov and Aleksandr Kolesnikov, who were drinking with him. According to preliminary data, Kravchenko had also injured a woman, who is now in the hospital.
A court in Chita has suspended the criminal case against Aleksey Patrushev, a former Wagner Group mercenary accused of robbery and attempted murder of a local woman, "due to changes in the criminal legislation." Patrushev was released from custody in the courtroom and handed over to a representative of the Ministry of Defense, despite the victim's protest. According to investigators, in April 2024, a drunken Patrushev attacked the woman and stabbed her several times. Recently, the head of the military service recruitment facility filed a petition to the court to suspend the proceedings against Patrushev. In 2014, the mercenary was sentenced to 23 years in a penal colony, from which he was recruited for the war as part of the Wagner Group.
A female resident of the Primorsky region [Russia's federal subject] stated that on the night of Oct. 13, five Russian servicemen raped her in a hotel room in Luchegorsk. The servicemen deny the rape and claim that the woman voluntarily went to the hotel with them, where they drank alcohol together. Before the hotel incident, as reported by the Astra Telegram channel, the servicemen of the 218th Tank Regiment had gone AWOL. Among those accused of rape are platoon commander Yevgeny L. and soldiers Aleksandr K., Aleksandr Y., Yevgeny S. and Nikita P. No criminal case has been initiated.
In Volgograd, a court has sentenced war participant Igor Kostin to two years in a penal colony on charges of robbery. The court considered his mental illness, participation in the war, injury and a medal as mitigating factors.
In the first six months of 2024, Russian garrison military courts issued criminal convictions against 6,088 military personnel, according to calculations by the Vyorstka media outlet, based on data from the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court. This is a record high for a six-month period, at least since 2011. Compared to the first half of 2023, the number more than doubled—garrison courts issued criminal convictions against 2,726 military personnel in the first six months of last year. Nearly half of those convicted in the first half of 2024—2,908 individuals—received real prison sentences. This figure is also a record since such statistics began being tracked. The estimated financial damage from their crimes reportedly increased by more than 30 times. Vazhnyye Istorii [an independent Russian investigative media outlet] reported on the reasons military personnel in Russia are being prosecuted and the material losses their actions are causing the country.
In June, the human rights organization Shkola Prizyvnika [Conscript School] reported that a court had ruled against the actions of a draft office after it failed three times to summon 23-year-old Viktor from the Moscow region to a draft board session, despite his applications for alternative civilian service. Viktor had applied for alternative civilian service three times but never received a summons to attend the board session. Instead, he continued to receive letters demanding that he appear at the draft office for a medical examination. The court ordered the draft office to review Viktor's application for alternative civilian service and issue him a lawful summons.
A criminal case has been opened against a native of the Pskov region for "confidential" cooperation with a foreign state. According to the Federal Security Service (FSB), in 2023, the man contacted a representative of a "Ukrainian public humanitarian project controlled by the Main Intelligence Directorate" of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense through Telegram. He allegedly provided representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with photos and coordinates of military and civilian sites located in Pskov.
Residents of the Perm region, Aleksey Gashev and Mikhail Sokolov, have been sentenced to 10 and 11 years in prison, respectively, on charges of participating in a terrorist organization, committing an act of terror, and treason. These charges stem from an attempt to set fire to a draft office building in June 2022. According to the FSB, Sokolov and Gashev were part of a terrorist organization and acted on the instructions of an individual allegedly cooperating with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Additionally, they gathered intelligence on targets within the Sverdlovsk railway system and passed this information to a foreign intelligence service.
Andrey Galchevsky, a financial director from Kaliningrad currently serving an 11-year sentence in a maximum security penal colony for treason and promoting terrorism, has requested to be transferred to a prison in Israel due to health issues. In 2022, Galchevsky had planned to emigrate to Lithuania or Poland. He had read online that it would be advisable for Russians seeking safety in those countries to carry an application to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. When he was searched at the Russian border, this document was found on him. According to his lawyer, Maria Bonzler, after this incident, Galchevsky began sending insulting messages to FSB officers and posted calls on Instagram to kill the heads of draft offices. As a result, he was placed in a pre-trial detention center and charged with calls for terrorism and intended treason.
The Ukrainian intelligence service has claimed responsibility for an action in Saint Petersburg. City promoters were handed posters with QR codes that led to a bot run by the intelligence agency. Photos and videos show these promoters standing outside metro stations and in front of military factories and design bureaus. The main Directorate of Intelligence described this as a "street action aimed at the employees of the enterprises of the military-industrial complex." No arrests of the promoters have been reported so far.
In Moscow, an elderly woman accused of setting fire to the door of a draft office was assigned compulsory medical measures. The incident occurred in August 2023, when the woman threw a Molotov cocktail at the building. She was arrested by officers of the Rosgvardia [Russian National Guard]. Initially, the case was investigated under hooliganism using a weapon. However, the charge was later reclassified as deliberate damage to property from molester motives.
As reported by Mediazona [independent Russian media outlet], Moscow courts have started removing information about charges from old case records related to preventive measures. Previously, the outlet noted that since the beginning of October, Moscow courts had stopped disclosing the reasons behind arrests and detentions. Now, this information is also being removed from case files that were submitted to the courts before October. As a result, journalists and human rights activists will no longer be able to track new defendants charged under politically motivated articles.
An appeals court has upheld a 25-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony for 24-year-old Ilya Baburin, who was convicted of attempting to set fire to a draft office.
Political prisoner Aleksey Moskalyov has been released from a penal colony in the Tula region (more photos and videos available). He spent about two years in detention after being convicted of "discrediting the Armed Forces" because of an anti-war drawing made by his daughter. Before the sentencing in late March, Moskalyov escaped from house arrest, where he had been placed during the trial. He attempted to flee the country via Belarus but was captured and extradited back to Russia. Moskalyov shared that FSB officers had questioned his cellmates in an attempt to file new charges against him. He also emphasized the importance of letters for political prisoners, something Dmitry Vasilets has previously mentioned as well.
The website of the project Skvoz' Stenu [Through the Wall], which sent news digests to political prisoners and published their responses to letters, has been fully blocked at the request of Roskomnadzor [Russia's internet censorship agency], according to Anastasia Shevchenko, the project's co-founder. The site is now inaccessible not only in Russia but globally. Shevchenko said that the site will be relaunched on a different hosting platform.
Assistance
Governor of the Perm region Dmitry Makhonin has proposed increasing the payment for students and wives of war participants for the birth of a child to 134,650 rubles [$1,410]. The current payment is 127,994 rubles [$1,340].
Longreads
The Sverdlovsk Region Court fined local resident Yana Lisitsyna 30,000 rubles [$310] in an administrative case for "discrediting the Armed Forces" after she refused to send her son to military training. Novaya Gazeta [independent Russian newspaper] reported her story.
Journalists from Novaya Gazeta Europe [European edition of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta] have calculated that one in every eight events in Russian kindergartens has a military-patriotic theme. In 2024 alone, over 200,000 such events were held with children as young as three.
The team behind the Blue Capybars project shared how young Russians and Ukrainians are rethinking the war and building a new reality in Minecraft, and how the game is becoming a platform for military propaganda.
Phishing websites are collecting data under the name of the Freedom of Russia Legion. At least some of them are controlled by Russian intelligence services. Mediazona investigated how this works and how dangerous it is.
Why Russians are heading to the trenches in the third year of the war is what exiled journalists from Vyorstka managed to investigate remotely. Despite the remote format, they found a way to put their questions to recruits at Moscow’s one-stop contract military service recruitment facility.