One day after the partial mobilization was announced, reservists for the war in Ukraine were already being drafted. This triggers panic in many families – but for the time being resistance is low.
More than a thousand people were arrested on Wednesday evening during protests across Russia against the partial mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin (picture from Moscow).
The recordings are oppressively bitter and come from the East Siberian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Emotional women, children and older men bid farewell to their male relatives on the grounds of the draft board. They are driven away by bus – for training, for equipment, to go to war.
Since Tuesday night, when rumors of an imminent mobilization of the Russian army began to mount, a great many Russian families have been panicking at the prospect of their husband, father, son or brother being conscripted sooner or later. Just one day after President Vladimir Putin’s order for partial mobilization, it seems clear that in many places the regional military authorities are distributing deployment orders very generously.
Broad interpretation of the convening criteria
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday named the number of 300,000 conscripts to be called up and the criteria used to select them. These seem to mean little. An internal directive from the Samara region on the Volga states that all those conscripted for military service can in principle be drafted and are subject to special conditions, such as a ban on leaving their city or district. In any case, an above-average number of contract soldiers deployed in Ukraine come from the Buryatia region on Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. It is said that men who would never have done military service, the elderly and fathers with many children would also be drafted.
The online portal Nowaja Gazeta Europe claims to have found out that the number of one million conscripts is hidden behind the secret seventh point of President Putin’s decree on partial mobilization. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected this. It is not unrealistic that the order provides for a much higher upper limit than Shoigu had put forward. However, military experts question the realization of the goals. And even if 300,000 people are conscripted, some of them under duress, they will only be operational with a delay and with questionable equipment.
Politically, mobilizing for the regime is a balancing act. Until a few days ago, a majority of the population had ignored the war with indifference or, at most, shrugged their shoulders. The political commentator Andrei Kolesnikov states therefore a breach of Putin’s social contract, which he describes as follows: “We, the citizens, allow you, the rulers, to steal and fight, but in return you leave our private lives alone.” The deliberately demobilized populace must now be mobilized for a far-off fight in arms and for service to a state whose institutions are despised by many. As recently as spring, Putin had explicitly ruled that out.
impotence and fatalism
The desperation is great in many families. Departures have increased dramatically. Not everyone can afford to emigrate for financial reasons, but often also for family reasons. Few are ready to revolt. So the choice is between war and prison. For some, the former is more realistic even if they don’t condone Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and are fundamentally unwilling to pay the ultimate price for the Russian state. The journalist Ivan Shilin describes this in an oppressive text in Novaya Gazeta on your own example. He was criticized by colleagues who had emigrated for his submissive attitude. But it reflects very well the dilemma of many Russian men and at the same time the powerlessness and fatalism that is also widespread in other situations in life.
Putin’s propaganda trick of justifying the mobilization with the threat to Russian sovereignty from the “collective West” is likely to convince quite a few of the need to go into battle. The propagandist Margarita Simonyan stated that she was not happy that partial mobilization had been announced. But the behavior of NATO, which has become the real enemy in Ukraine, makes this necessary. In a television talk show, the ultra-conservative Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov even praised the war as a chance for men to show their masculinity.
Protesters receive position orders
A few thousand people showed amazing courage on Wednesday evening, taking to the streets in dozens of Russian cities against the war and partial mobilization. In Moscow, among other things, they marched through the pedestrian zone on the Arbat and chanted “No war!” and «Putin, go into the trenches yourself!». Such gatherings and parades are immediately and brutally suppressed by the security forces, and this is how it was now. More than a thousand arrests were recorded.
Those arrested face fines, arrest penalties and criminal consequences if the offense is repeated. At numerous police stations, men who were taken away by the police were given orders to position themselves, regardless of the personal situation of the person concerned. The partial mobilization is further, much more drastic evidence that the regime sees the war against Ukraine as a war against its own people.
Some Western observers and Russian opposition figures in exile judged Wednesday’s protest as a moral failure: As if none of the Russian crimes in Ukraine had happened, the Russians only plucked up the courage to resist when their own lives were at stake. This fails to recognize the sheer impossibility of a major protest and the hopelessness in which those who stayed here find themselves.