Mobilization in Russia: “Everyone in the country is being drafted”

Partial mobilization in Russia affects the rural population to a large extent. In the Russian republics in particular, the authorities are trying to conscript the unemployed, the old and the sick. But people’s anger is growing.

She screams so desperately that her voice almost fails. “You mustn’t draft them,” a woman in the Caucasus Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria shouts at a Russian official. “You mustn’t draft our people a second time!” She screams in horror at the officer’s incomprehensible murmur: “So that’s why you sent our children there?!”

Angry women demonstrate

These are scenes that are coming to the public these days from a wide variety of Russian regions. On Saturday, a video from the Republic of Dagestan went around the world. It shows residents scolding a female officer at a recruitment office. A man shouts that his grandfather fought in a war. “But that’s not war, that’s politics.”

The day after then pictures also from the Caucasus Republic of Dagestan. Hundreds of mostly angry women demonstrated there against the mobilization. One of them shouts that her son and husband are already fighting in Ukraine. “And now the authorities are fighting me, too.”

In the country everyone is drafted

Above all, away from large Russian cities, in rural areas, there is great dissatisfaction with the mobilization. But why is that?

For the political scientist Mikhail Komin, one answer lies in the way in which Russia is “partially mobilized”. In his opinion, the word “part” does not refer to the appeasement of the Russian defense minister that only about one percent of the reservists are drafted. The word “part”, or “partly” used in Russian, refers to the unequal treatment between town and country.

In Moscow, St. Petersburg and other big cities, fewer people would simply be conscripted, Komin explains. And if so, then this is done in greater accordance with the legal requirements. Because officially, according to the categories declared by the Defense Minister, only reservists with combat experience should be mobilized. Professional groups such as employees of state media or employees of some IT companies are excluded.

“In the countryside, however – roughly speaking – everyone is drafted.” Anyone who can be taken away would also be taken away, according to the political scientist.

Buryats as “cannon fodder”

In fact, new cases keep coming to light from people who officially shouldn’t have been drafted in the first place. There is the report of a 58-year-old school principal whose military service was 30 years ago. Men from Yakutia who would never have done military service, and the father of four children, who also did not have to serve.

Alexandra Garmashapova also knows many such cases. The young woman is the president of the “Free Buryatia Foundation”, a foreign organization that campaigns for the interests of ethnic Buryats in Russia.

Garmashapova has criticized in the past that impoverished Buryats are being sent to Ukraine as “cannon fodder”. And now the authorities are trying to draft everyone they can reach: they’ve called inmates, students, and even the long dead. Many Buryats have therefore already contacted their organization to find out how they could cross the border into Mongolia.

Mobilization not going well

The governor of the ethnic republic of Yakutia was one of the first to admit mistakes in the mobilization.

An admission from Moscow followed on Monday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that there are indeed cases where the presidential decree on “partial mobilization” has been violated. In the next breath, however, Peskow shifted the responsibility for this to the regions. According to the Kremlin spokesman, the heads of administration of the regions are responsible for convening.

The mobilization is “not going very well” especially in the Russian republics in the Caucasus. This was confirmed by Caucasus expert Denis Sokolow in an interview with the online medium Dozhd. One reason for this would be the many volunteers who had already served in the “special operation” and would have returned to their relatives in coffins: “That’s where most of the dead are,” says Sokolow. “People went to morgues to look for their loved ones.”

In the “head of Vladimir Putin”

The residents of the Russian republics therefore understand what is happening in Ukraine. “But they don’t understand,” says Caucasus expert Sokolow, “why they need this war.”

Political scientist Komin also explains that ARD Studio Moscow on the other hand, that ethnic Buryats, Tatars or Bashkirs cannot understand “what kind of war we are talking about here”. They would ask why they need to defend the Russian world, the so-called “russkij mir” in “Vladimir Putin’s head”.

For Sokolow, the mobilization is now heralding a “countdown”, even if it will probably tick for a long time. The only question is in which direction the regime in Moscow will develop as a reaction to the general dissatisfaction among the population.

Not a good one for political scientist Komin: As long as there are people “who can plug holes at the front, there is no reason to talk about the instability of the political regime.” In his opinion, the answer from Moscow will be even more dictatorial: “A power based on armed force.”