mobilization briefs
October 22, 2022

Volunteer summary on mobilization in the Russian Federation for October 20-21

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov stated that information about sending the mobilized to the front without proper preparation will be checked, these issues are dealt with by the Russian Defense Ministry.

The head of the State Duma Committee on family, women and children, Nina Ostanina, said that the number of Russian citizens conscripted under the “partial” mobilization had reached 260,000 people. "Partial" mobilization in Russia will be completed next week as stated by Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov, and the head of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces Yevgeny Burdinsky confirmed the data, according to “Opershtab Tatarstana” (the Operational Headquarters of Tatarstan) Telegram channel.

“Verstka” (Russian independent media outlet) has calculated how much the mobilized and their families are paid in different regions. The average amount of payment is 126 thousand rubles. The largest amount - 500 thousand rubles per person - was allocated by the authorities of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area, but it is divided into two parts. In terms of one-time payments, two regions are in the lead - Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area and Sakhalin. The authorities of these regions promised to pay each mobilized soldier 300 thousand rubles. While the mobilized in Mari El, Kalmykia, as well as Saratov, Samara, Pskov, Lipetsk, Orenburg and Tambov regions will get only 50 thousand rubles. We are talking about one-time payments by the regional authorities.

“Vazhnyye istorii” (“Important Stories”, an independent Russian website specializing in investigative journalism) summarizes the results of the first month of mobilization: more than 200 thousand have been drafted, five thousand have been sent to war by mistake and the first reports of those who were killed have appeared.

The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, reports that he regularly sends everything most necessary for the mobilized and will continue to do it, but the lists of what is needed are not getting smaller. In the meantime, a mobilized soldier received the following things from the administration of Stavropol: a paintball mask, a 1-liter thermos, a winter uniform (he had already bought one on his own), small size tactical gloves that would rather fit a teenager, and rubber boots unsuitable for cold weather. The activists of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation brought boxes with the inscription "I❤️USSR" to the mobilized from Novosibirsk. Employees of a municipal enterprise of the housing and communal services in Irkutsk were volunteered to donate 1.5 thousand rubles of their salaries to "help the mobilized." The companies of the Bichursky district of Buryatia organized the release of a batch of canned corned beef for the mobilized. In a candy store in Bratsk, Irkutsk Region, labels with armed men, armored personnel carriers and the inscriptions “For Russia” and “We are TogeZer'were taped to “Alenka” chocolate bars in order to send them to the mobilized along with the clothes sewn and knitted for soldiers by volunteers. In Ufa, schoolchildren's parents said that they had not given their consent to buy things for the mobilized with the money raised by the schoolchildren - the funds raised at school No. 128 were used for these purposes without them knowing.

University and college students of the Kemerovo region will be sent as a workforce to industrial facilities replacing the mobilized. The announcement was made by the governor of Kuzbass Sergey Tsivilev who called it a "labor mobilization".

An enterprise in Rostov-on-Don canceled a major investment project due to the mobilization of employees. 25 employees and the CEO of the “Rostov AirFactory” will go to the war. Notably, the head of the region declared that the mobilization had met the target on October 3. In spite of this, a week later draft notice delivery was recommenced.

Three thousand employees were mobilized from Wildberries online marketplace - this is more than from Bryansk and Kaluga regions combined. According to Mash, military enlistment office representatives arrived at Wildberries warehouses in buses in the middle of the working day and, with marketplace management assistance, were handing draft notice to men at the exit points.

Upon the special regime announcement in the Krasnodar region, orders to report to military enlistment offices for drawing mobilization lists began to appear attached at apartment building entrances.

In the Kalininsky district of St. Petersburg, parking lot employees were instructed to distribute draft notices to garage owners. Later on it was clarified that the notices were to be handed over to parking lot employees only.

A battalion named Ugra will be formed from the mobilized of the Khanty-Mansiysk region. According to Yugra Senator Eduard Isakov, similar personalized battalions have already been created in other regions, for example, the Kuzbass battalion was formed in Kemerovo.

The mobilized of the Ermak battalion from Tyumen were sent to the forests near Enerhodar after just two weeks of "training", with no medical examination. They were mobilized on September 26; on October 13-14 they had already arrived in Ukraine. According to a relative of one of the mobilized, they were not even supplied with tents - sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags, with no portable stoves to dry their clothes and keep warm.

Buses with the mobilized were sent off from Megion in the Khanty-Mansiysk region. The city mayor promised to support their families in any situation.

In Yekaterinburg, buses with the mobilized are leaving from a military enlistment office. Buses departed today from Cheboksary. Mobilized residents of Nizhny Novgorod and Kostroma are sent to the front from the NBC Protection Military Academy campus.

Another group left Penza for the Southern Military District. Five large buses  are being sent from the assembly point in Izhevsk for several days in a row. Another 50 mobilized Novgorod residents were sent to training - a "grand ceremony" was held to celebrate the dispatch. The mobilized from the Irkutsk region were sent to the front. Prior to that, they were trained for a month at a training center in Novosibirsk. 26 people from the Orenburg region were sent to the front.

Medics and hospital staff members from Saratov, including women, were sent to war. This information has been disclosed by the Deputy Minister of Health of the Saratov region Denis Graifer.

Relatives of the mobilized from the Belgorod region are posting complaints en masse on the page of the Governor of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov on the VKontakte social network. One of the requests is as follows: “The man has a hole in his head, how can he be fit [for military service]?”. Officials from the regional administration respond with a promise to handle the issue.

Albeit the October 19 announcement of the State Duma (lower chamber of the Russian Federal Assembly [parliament]) speaker Vyacheslav Volodin regarding calling off the multi-child fathers from the military units, not all the fathers were sent back home. Two residents of Krasnoyarsk region, who have three kids each, were mobilized and sent to a training center. Both men are to be sent to combat units, regardless of the exemptions promised by the State Duma. A resident of Saint Petersburg got his military occupational specialty changed and attributed with fake military training [in the past], also he was denied medical examination, all by the decision of a draft office during the mobilization procedure. The same fate awaited Igor Zhdanov from Moscow — he got his military specialty changed by a draft office. And a man with intestinal hemorrhage was mobilized in Kostroma. His wife staged a solitary protest.

There is good news also. The ICU doctor Sergei Shevyrev with the experience of military missions, who was assigned to infantry through mobilization and whom we mentioned in the summary for October 19-20, was sent back home.

According to the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense Andrei Kartopolov, about 10,000 mobilized people were returned home for various reasons. He also stated that the "partial" mobilization in St. Petersburg is still not completed. And in the Orenburg region, 60 percent of the planned number of people have been called up at the moment, according to the statement of the regional military commissar [head of enlistment office] Dmitry Kileev.

In the Bryansk region, the mobilized were reportedly held in custody by armed guards. A relative of one of the conscripts said, "they are being held hostage in the military unit 12721 in the town of Klintsy, they are not allowed to see their relatives or to go outside, they are being kept under guard." Complaints filed to the prosecutor's office of Bryansk remained unanswered. Konstantin Pavlov, a deputy of the Bryansk Regional Duma, claims that 34 illegally mobilized soldiers had been returned to the region for medical treatment due to his efforts. The deputy said that these people were sent to a military unit in the Belgorod region without having passed a physical evaluation commission. The deputy filed complaints with the prosecutor's office and with the military commissar. After that, the mobilized were brought back to the town of Klintsy for medical examination. Some of them have already been demobilized.

The mobilized from the Krasnodar region complain about the poor conditions they encounter. They are left with no communication, medication, or equipment, and only occasionally are sent some kind of aid. One of the conscripts was identified as a member of the Krasnodar city council representing the Novyye lyudi [the New People] political party.

The mobilized describe the situation in Togliatti and complain about living conditions. And the mobilized from the city of Moscow and the Moscow region complain about the lack of payments and equipment. The spouses of the mobilized residents of Voronezh say that their husbands were not examined or trained before being sent to the combat zone. The uniforms of the mobilized in Bashkiria were described as "Soviet" by a resident of the region. Several items from the Second World War period were given to a conscript from Ufa.

A mobilized IT specialist from Raiffeisenbank died in Ukraine. 33-year-old Timur Izmailov held a key IT position at the bank, which is why he twice went to the military registration and enlistment office to receive a deferment. Instead, on September 23rd, he was mobilized. On October 3rd, his sister turned to social networks for help. On October 5th, he ended up in a combat zone, and on October 7th he was killed. A 45-year-old mobilized resident of Buryatia also was killed in the “special military operation”. Moreover, he took part in the operation in spring, returned from the front in the summer, but was conscripted this autumn. A man mobilized from Balashikha, near Moscow, was killed near Svatove. Before reaching Ukraine, a 35-year-old resident of Lesosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk region, died in a military unit. Cause of death - pulmonary edema and pneumonia. A 34-year-old Dmitry Germanov from Chuvashia also did not have time to get to the front; he died at the training unit. The circumstances of his death are not disclosed, even to his family.

A resident of Svetogorsk, Leningrad region, wanted to go to the front as a volunteer. The man was sent to Kostroma, and for several days he was uncertain of his military status and whether he would be paid. Ultimately, it turned out that he was enrolled as a mobilized soldier, and not as a volunteer.

In Ulyanovsk, the military registration and enlistment office conscripted a local resident, Ivan Gerey, for military service. Gerey has three children under the age of 16. The man filed a lawsuit with the Zasviyazhsky District Court of Ulyanovsk, which took preliminary protection measures and suspended the execution of the draft decision. Eventually the parties agreed to an out of court settlement — the plaintiff withdrew the claim, and the military office promised to review the decision and grant a deferment from service, as regards to secret Directions of the General Staff.

In the Sheremetyevo international airport, a female passenger was not allowed to board her plane to Turkey. She's a 37 years-old health care professional on her way to a Turkey holiday trip, who, back in 2007, was temporarily given an army reserve officer's rank. Before she arrived at the airport customs, she had received no orders of any sort that would ban her from traveling overseas. Neither did she receive a draft notice. In the Minsk airport, more than 10 Russian citizens, attempting to escape from the mobilization, were taken off an international flight. In the Moscow Pulkovo airport dozens of passengers, including several women, were not allowed to board their plane to Istanbul. They were advised to visit their local conscription office instead. On a good note, from the 22nd of October, the mobile conscript office at the Russia-Georgia border will be removed.

Information coming from the Russian Central Bank is showing the outgoing flow of funds from private bank accounts in Russia has reached 458 billion rubles since the mobilization was announced.

All marriage registration bureaus in Yakutia have switched to a 24/7 work schedule. It was done so that all new draftees can register their nuptials before they are off.

The "Udmurtia against corruption" Telegram channel has released a set of instructions for the local council on the content of billboards, stickers and general advertisement for the Day of National Unity and the New Year's Eve. The main idea behind this directive is to boost the mobilization readiness. "Let us unite and together we will be victorious"