Just hours after President Vladimir Putin’s speech declaring a partial military mobilization on Wednesday, men across Russia, including some who had tried for months to ignore Ukraine’s messy war, were suddenly plunged into chaos as they were called up at the service
The men, mostly reservists under the age of 35 who served in the military and hold junior military ranks, received written notices at their offices or at home. In some cases, their IDs were checked on the street and they were told to undergo a health check. Others received orders over the phone.
Meanwhile, anxious relatives began to look for ways to flee the country or avoid their loved ones being called up for service. Flights to the few cities abroad that still offer direct service to Russia — most destinations have been cut off by sanctions — suddenly sold out.
Google search trends showed an increase in queries such as “how to get out of Russia” and even “how to break an arm at home”, prompting speculation that some Russians were considering resorting to self-harm to avoid the war
“They’ve been chasing me since February, trying to offer me a contract,” one Moscow resident, who served in the military and has prior combat experience, said in an interview.
The man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said that unlike others who had received written subpoenas, he had received a personal call from the military enlistment office, which he has had for months your number at hand. “I was ordered to undergo one [health] committee tomorrow morning,” he told the Washington Post. “So, I doubt I’ll be saved now.”
Military analysts said it was not certain that the partial mobilization would be able to turn the military campaign to Russia’s advantage quickly, if at all. But by Wednesday night, it was clear that the political backlash that Putin feared — and that led him to resist a mobilization for months despite repeated setbacks on the battlefield — had begun.
In response to Putin’s decree, criticism of the war, which had been growing internationally and domestically despite a severe Kremlin crackdown on dissent, suddenly erupted.
Relatively contained but significant protests broke out not only in the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in Novosibirsk in remote Siberia. By Wednesday evening, more than 1,000 people had been arrested across the country, according to OVD-Info, an independent group that monitors protest activity in Russia, a remarkable number given that criticism of the war can be punished with long prison terms.
In the capital, hundreds chanted “Let our children live!” and “Send Putin to the trenches!” as they walked down Arbat Street. Videos on social media showed police officers arresting protesters and loading them into police vans and buses, including one man shouting “No to war!”
In St. Petersburg, police officers were seen beating protesters with batons and violently breaking up the crowd. At the small protest in Novosibirsk, a man was arrested as he shouted at police officers: “I don’t want to die for Putin and you!”
An online petition against the mobilization, started last spring, suddenly grew to more than 292,000 signatures.
Putin calls up up to 300,000 reservists and backs annexation amid war losses
Putin’s decision to order the partial mobilization, in an effort to call up up to 300,000 reservists, reflected his dwindling options to try to reverse some terrible battlefield defeats, including a Ukrainian blitzkrieg that forced Russian troops to withdraw from northeast Kharkiv. region
In a national address on Wednesday morning, he deployed his latest tangled web of anti-Russian conspiracy theories about the Nazis and NATO, declaring his support for referendums held in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which many western leaders have done. denounced as fake votes and an illegitimate claim to annex the sovereign territory of Ukraine.
While Putin stopped short of declaring full mobilization, which would lead to a national draft, the partial mobilization immediately began twisting the lives of reservists.
In Murmansk, in Russia’s Arctic north, an employee of Nornickel, a nickel plant that fought in the Chechen war more than a decade ago, received a notice ordering him to report to a military commissariat local
Employees of Surgutneftegas, a Russian oil and gas company in western Siberia, began receiving lists of people required to report for a two-week “training session,” according to a relative of one of the employees and a letter leaked to a Russian telegram. channel
Some eligible men in Moscow told The Post they had received notices requiring them to report for similar 15-day military training starting Monday. Russian news outlet Mediazona reported similar accounts from residents of at least three other cities.
New casualty figures reported by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday showing that 5,937 Russians have died in Ukraine, a figure Western governments say is artificially low, did little to bolster popular support for the mobilization, nor Xoigu’s claims, made without evidence. , with a much higher death toll on the Ukrainian side.
The letters left by demoralized Russian soldiers as they fled
Although Putin insisted in his speech that Russia was successfully removing Nazis from eastern Ukraine and claimed broad public support among residents of the regions of Ukraine he hopes to annex (but not yet fully controls neither militarily nor politically), calls of protest spread across Russian social media. media
Mobilization “means that thousands of Russian men — our fathers, brothers and husbands — will be thrown into the meat grinder of war. What will they die for? For Putin’s palace?” said the Vesna protest movement in a public call for demonstrations.
“The authorities said at the beginning that only ‘professionals’ fight and that they would win. It turned out they weren’t winning,” the group added. “So the war is no longer out there; it has arrived in our houses”.
While Wednesday’s demonstrations could not be compared to the tens of thousands of people who marched through Russian squares against Putin’s re-election a decade ago, they were the biggest show of public discontent since the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. .
For many Russians, Putin’s speech on Wednesday created a terrible sense of deja vu. From that first day of the invasion in February, rumors of imminent mobilization led to a mass exodus of people fleeing to neighboring Armenia and Georgia or boarding the last flights to Turkey, Dubai or Tel Aviv.
As their fears materialized again, Russians in major cities fled to the borders once again, buying up all remaining flights to the few visa-free destinations still available to Russian passport holders.
Lacking soldiers to send to war, Russia’s mercenaries recruit in prisons
Some of those who lost their tickets gathered at land borders with Finland and Mongolia, forming long traffic jams at checkpoints, according to images posted online.
Online chat rooms sprang up offering live updates of border crossings with people reporting whether guards had let them through.
“I’ve been waiting for this since the end of February; I was trying to calm down, hoping that this operation would be over, and I kept putting off this decision,” Anna, a Moscow resident and mother of two children, one of whom is 24, told The Post, and adding that he decided to send his children to Armenia this week.
“I don’t want my son to go to war, that’s unacceptable,” Anna said. “What are the objectives of this operation? Why should our children sacrifice their lives? We never wanted this war.”
Another Moscow resident, a computer worker whose age makes him eligible for military service but has not yet been called up, said he was speeding up his family’s emigration and hopes to leave in early October.
“Of course there’s a bit of panic,” he said. “I worry that it will get worse, though I don’t know how worse it can be, and that it will be too late to leave.” He added, “But we have some unfinished business here, and the only tickets I found were already over $16,000, which I can’t afford.”
A Moscow millionaire who lives partly in Italy but had returned to Russia for a few days described growing disenchantment with Putin and fear for the future among business executives. The millionaire said he feared he could be stuck in Moscow, even though he is not in the military reserve.
“There are no tickets, and it’s getting harder and harder to get out on the road,” he said. “If there are additional restrictions due to partial mobilization, it may not be possible to get out.”
The millionaire, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said many in the business elite and the intelligentsia saw the war as “a stupid mistake,” and few they were convinced by Putin’s argument that he is defending. Speaking Russian in Eastern Ukraine.
“The confidence of businessmen, of the cultural and academic elite in the regime, has disappeared. Everyone understands that all the words about the defense of the Russian-speaking population [in Ukraine] and the fight for our brothers has no relation to reality,” he said. “Everyone sees this as a stupid mistake.”
Russian lawyers reported a flurry of calls from worried men, their mothers and wives asking for legal strategies to avoid being called.
Legislation hastily passed Tuesday by the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, sets tough new punishments for those who try to evade service, surrender or refuse to fight.
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