Tag: conscription

Victory Day 2025

Sergei Podgorkov, Outside the Obukhov Factory (St. Petersburg), 9 May 2025

Source: Sergei Podgorkov (Facebook), 9 May 2025

On Friday, May ninth, Treptow Park was perhaps the most heavily guarded place in Berlin. Hundreds of police officers kept the peace at Germany’s most famous memorial to Soviet soldiers on the day Russia marked the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet tradition. Because Russia has employed symbols of that earlier war in its current war against Ukraine, visitors were banned from displaying or wearing Soviet and Russian flags, military uniforms, and St George’s ribbons at the Berlin memorial this year. An exception was made for veterans and diplomats.

Soviet May ninth traditions and German pacifists

At about half past ten in the morning, a wreath was laid at the monument to the Soviet soldier by Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergei Nechayev. The day before, when Germany remembered the Wehrmacht’s surrender and the end of the war, Nechayev and the Belarusian ambassador were not invited to the memorial event at the Bundestag. In his speech, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier thanked the Allies for liberating his country and recalled the Red Army’s sacrifices, but harshly criticized Russian attempts to justify the war in Ukraine in terms of the fight against the Nazis in the Second World War.

The flood of people in Treptow Park seemed endless: hundreds were there at any one time, and thousands came and went over the course of the day. Many brought scarlet carnations, while some bore wreaths. Russian and German were heard. Most of the visitors were elderly—immigrants from the former USSR living in Germany and Germans. There were also many leftist and ultra-leftist German political activists brandishing placards opposing NATO and calling for “peace with Russia.”

German ultra-leftists rally for “peace with Russia” and Germany’s exit from NATO, 9 May 2025.
Photo: Roman Goncharenko/Deutsche Welle

Against this backdrop, the scene resembled a mixture of a traditional Russian May ninth celebration and a political protest by German pacifists, many of whom had clearly lived most of their lives in the GDR.

“I was a policeman in the GDR,” said a man in his sixties who held a placard that read “Thank you” in Russian. The policemen asked him to doff his Soviet cap, which sported a red star and a St. George’s ribbon.

“All people want peace, so the politicians should don their own military uniforms and crawl into the trenches,’ the man said.

Soviet wartime songs sounded from loudspeakers and were played live. One man, aged forty-five, climbed atop a mound to get a better view, but a policeman asked him to get off the lawn, explaining, “This is a grave.” The man cursed in Russian but climbed off the mound.

Another man played played “Arise, Great Country” on his clarinet. When he began quietly playing the melody of the Soviet and Russian national anthem, the police literally took him aside, after which he returned to the group of people who had gathered. They were outraged at the restrictions that had been adopted. From time to time, someone chanted “Russia, Russia!” and many other people would join in.

An ex-East German police office (holding a sign that says “Thanks!” in Russian): “All people want peace.”
Photo: Roman Goncharenko/Deutsche Welle

Bikers in Treptow Park

Your correspondent saw men and a woman in leather jackets who looked like bikers from the Russian motorcycle gang Night Wolves. They were in small groups and were escorted by a large number of police officers. They posed for pictures in front of the wreaths and left. They could have been someone from a local “support group.” The Berlin press had written that only a small group of bikers made the trip to Berlin to visit the Soviet memorials this year. No incidents had been reported as this article went to press.

Treptow Park, 9 May 2025. The crimson and gold banners at the back of the crowd are inscribed with the names of the various “fronts” in the Red Army’s campaign against the Wehrmacht. Photo: Roman Goncharenko/Deutsche Welle

For the first half of the day, at least, things seemed relatively calm. Your correspondent had the impression that most people had come to Treptow Park not for political reasons, but to commemorate the war. And yet the atmosphere was tense. To the right and left of the monument to the Soviet warrior stood a dozen and a half activists holding placards and the flags of Ukraine and NATO.

Activists with placards and Ukrainian flags at the monument to Soviet soldiers in Treptow Park, 9 May 2025.
Photo: Roman Goncharenko/Deutsche Welle

They said they wanted to draw attention to the Ukrainian Red Army soldiers who had perished in the Second World War, as well as to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“I am here to prevent this event from being turned into a Russian propaganda stunt,” said a woman, aged thirty-five. According to her, insults had been hurled at her and the pro-Ukrainian activists.

“Some people regard our presence here as a provocation,” said the woman. “We are not here to change anyone’s mind, but to make Ukraine visible.”

One of their posters read: “Russia has usurped the memory of May eighth and ninth. But it was not Russia who liberated us from the yoke of National Socialism eighty years ago in Berlin. It was the Red Army, in whose ranks many Ukrainians served.”

The poster tells the story of Ukrainian soldier Fyodor Karpenko, who left his name on the walls of the destroyed Reichstag building in May 1945.

Source: Roman Goncharenko, “May Ninth in Berlin’s Treptow Park: A War of Words,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 9 May 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Since the Maidan uprising and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Kremlin propaganda has consistently portrayed Ukrainian leaders as Nazis or fascists. Russia also accused the Ukrainian authorities of “genocide” of the population of Donbass. On 24 February 2022, while announcing the full-scale invasion, the “denazification” of Ukraine was presented as the primary goal of the war, which is itself portrayed merely as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War: a conflict embedded in a cyclical conception of time in which Russia, eternally under threat from a Western enemy, fights for its very survival — on Ukrainian soil.

On the ground, there is no evidence to support Moscow’s accusations: nobody has ever documented a “genocide” against ethnic Russians or Russian speakers, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere. As for the Ukrainian far-right, its political influence remains minimal: in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the main ultra-nationalist parties, running together on a joint list, received just over 2% of the vote, well below the threshold required to enter Parliament. In short, the image of a “Nazi regime” in Kyiv is based on a glaring mismatch between rhetoric and reality.

So why do the Russian authorities repeatedly invoke references to the Second World War — or, in Russian parlance, the “Great Patriotic War” — when speaking about Ukraine? Understanding this memory dynamic is essential to grasp the power of a rhetoric that, despite lacking any factual basis, continues to shape the official Russian worldview.

The Soviet and Russian insistence on using the term “Great Patriotic War” to refer exclusively to the period from 1941 to 1945 erases the twenty-one months that preceded Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR. Between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, and Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, Moscow and Berlin were de facto allies: they engaged in extensive economic cooperation, diplomatic coordination, jointly invaded and partitioned Poland in September 1939, and the Soviet Union proceeded to annex the Baltic countries and wage war against Finland. By reducing the war to the period 1941–1945, the USSR and Russia could deny any responsibility in the outbreak of the Second World War and present itself solely as the victim of Nazi aggression and the primary liberator of Europe.

The Great Patriotic War — and especially the victory in 1945 — became the founding event of Soviet history and the cornerstone of collective memory. Yet this memory, often portrayed as monolithic and universally shared, is anything but uniform. A Ukrainian from the west, who endured two successive occupations between 1939 and 1944, remembers a war very different from that of an eastern Ukrainian, whose experience was shaped primarily by Nazi destruction. The memory of a Russian bears little resemblance to that of a Crimean Tatar, who was deported along with his entire community and denied the right of return for decades. As for Soviet Jews, whose families and communities were annihilated in the Holocaust, they were long forced to remain silent — official narratives left no room for the specificity of their suffering.

The collective experience of the war and the official discourse surrounding it deeply reshaped the Soviet population’s understanding of “fascism” and “antifascism.” Rather than referring to a specific political doctrine of the inter-war period, the term “fascism” had become a catch-all label for the ultimate enemy. Trotsky or the British Conservatives could just as easily be branded as “fascists,” as well as domestic and international opponents after 1945 — including even the Chinese Communists. The word “Nazi” itself was rarely used. In everyday life, calling someone a “fascist” served more as the gravest possible insult rather than as a statement of ideological substance.

Under Vladimir Putin, the cult of the Great Patriotic War has been revived. Following the pro-democracy protests of 2011 and Putin’s bid for a third presidential term in 2012, the regime instituted a deliberate policy of historical narrative construction, aimed at grounding its legitimacy in a vision of the nation as under siege. The glorification of the 1945 victory also allowed the regime to purge collective memory of its specifically socialist elements: by retaining only the narrative of national triumph, the Soviet period could be seamlessly integrated into a continuous national history without any revolutionary rupture. At the same time, the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin as a legitimate victor served to validate autocracy. The mass repressions and genocidal policies that claimed millions of lives were reframed as a tragic but necessary step: they had made the USSR a global superpower, capable of defending civilization against the “brown plague.”

The Kremlin has multiplied its legal instruments to enforce this narrative. Since 2020, the Russian Constitution mandates “respect for the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland” and prohibits “diminishing the importance of the heroism” of the Soviet people. In April 2021, Putin signed a law increasing penalties for “insults” or “false claims” about the Second World War and its veterans. In December 2019, Putin himself gathered some leaders of post-Soviet states around a pile of archival documents that he said proved historical truths long ignored in the West — selectively quoting them to justify, in retrospect, the USSR’s annexation of Poland and the Baltic states. In this way, Putin has weaponized history, which has become inseparable from national interest. To challenge his interpretation is tantamount to treason.

Every year on May 9, Russians march in the Immortal Regiment carrying portraits of relatives who fought between 1941 and 1945. Increasingly, the faces of those who fought — or died — in the war against Ukraine are added to these ranks, as though both wars were part of a single, endless struggle. Past and present warfare are merged, and the victory of 1945 becomes the lens through which all events — past, present, and future — are interpreted in a continuous historical timeline. This symbolic fusion also explains the surreal images of Russian occupation forces who, in recent weeks, have placed propaganda banners in destroyed Ukrainian cities. An uninhabitable Bakhmut was transformed into a stage for celebrating the 80th anniversary of Russia’s victory in the “Great Patriotic War.” 

The cult of victory is not only a central element of the Putinist imaginary — it functions as an operating system for both domestic governance and external aggression, with all of Russia’s actions on the international stage framed as part of an eternal war against fascism. A telling example of this is the installation of a giant screen on the Estonian border, broadcasting Victory Day celebrations in a loop — an attempt to remind Estonians, as well as Latvians and Lithuanians, that the Soviet victory represents an unassailable moral superiority. In the Russian collective imagination, the word “fascism” has lost all connection with a specific political ideology and now refers only to an abstract, absolute threat: the desire to destroy Russia. It has become synonymous with “enemy” or “Russophobe,” always denoting the Other, never a historically defined movement. This separation between word and meaning allows the regime to simultaneously glorify the antifascist victory and openly promote xenophobic, homophobic, or ultraconservative rhetoric, without any perceived contradiction.

The word “denazification,” used by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, to justify the invasion, initially puzzled many Russians, most of whom were unfamiliar with the term in this context. Shortly afterwards, the state news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev — “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine” — aimed at clarifying its meaning: “denazification” was described as a “total cleansing,” targeting not only alleged Nazi leaders but also “the popular masses who are passive Nazis,” deemed guilty of having supported the “Nazi government.” According to Sergeytsev, modern Ukraine is able to hide its Nazism behind aspirations for “independence” and “European development.” To destroy this Nazism, he argues, is to “de-Europeanise” Ukraine. In this logic, denazification becomes synonymous with eliminating all Western influence from Ukraine and dismantling the country’s existence as a nation-state and a distinct society. Incubated on official state platforms, this narrative reveals the true scope of “denazification”: a large-scale project aimed at erasing any trace of Ukrainian singularity, a blueprint for the genocide.

The article recently published on the official website of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), entitled “Eurofascism, Today as 80 Years Ago, Is a Common Enemy of Moscow and Washington,” strikingly illustrates the expansion of the “denazification” discourse far beyond Ukraine. The accompanying image depicts a grotesque hybrid monster: its body is shaped like a black swastika with the EU’s circle of stars in the centre, while its head is a caricature of Ursula von der Leyen. The creature, with its blood-stained claws outstretched, is caught between two bayonets — one American, the other Russian/Soviet. This grotesque image is not merely a provocation: it reflects a narrative deeply entrenched in Russian state propaganda, where “Eurofascism” becomes an operational concept encompassing all European societies.

“Eurofascism, Today as 80 Years Ago, Is a Common Enemy of Moscow and Washington.” Screenshot courtesy of Meduza

The 2022 tipping point revealed these discourses for what they truly are: the ideological foundation of a large-scale invasion, long prepared within the informational sphere. Today, part of European society — particularly elements of the pacifist left — is falling into the same trap: underestimating or ignoring the ongoing propaganda dynamic. But the machine is already in motion. The language of fascism is being broadened daily to include new designated enemies, and the ideological war is shifting: it is no longer stopping at Ukraine — it is now targeting all of Europe. In the face of this brutal reconfiguration of the official Russian narrative, complacency or passivity have themselves become forms of strategic blindness.

Source: Hanna Perekhoda, “From Kyiv to Brussels: The Great Patriotic War as Putin’s Propaganda,” in “Victory Day: Three Interventions from the Left,” Posle, 7 May 2025. Ms. Perekhoda is a Ukrainian historian, researcher, and activist.

Russia’s consolidated military registration registry website, Reestrpovestok.rf, is fully operational. On Friday, 9 May 2025, the human rights project Get Lost, which helps Russians avoid conscription into the army, reported that the notifications that it was operating in test mode had disappeared from the website, and the online resource appeared to have been fully launched.

Upon arrival on the website, users can log in to their personal accounts, check summonses, and obtain copies of records. Earlier, the website indicated that it was functioning in beta mode only in three regions—Sakhalin, Ryazan, and the Republic of Mari El. This notification has now disappeared.

“So far no one who has received a summons through this site or faced automatic restrictions has contacted us,” the human rights activists added. The registry’s launch has not been officially announced.

Recipients of summonses to face restrictions if they fail to report to military recruitment center

The law establishing a consolidated registry of persons subject to conscription and introducing electronic summonses was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2023. The text of the document, in particular, states that conscripts who do not report to a military enlistment office within twenty days of receiving a summons may be prohibited from registering as an individual entrepreneur, registering vehicles and real estate, driving a vehicle, and getting a bank loan. In addition, they will not be able to leave Russia until they report to a military enlistment office.

A screenshot of the military enlistment summons website, outlining the penalties imposed on Russians who fail to respond.

The full-fledged launch of the electronic summonses registry was planned for last autumn, but was subsequently postponed.

The registry contains data on all Russian nationals who are already registered and are subject to military registration, as well as those who are not yet registered but are obliged to do so. Lawyers stress that the law and the decree apply to the delivery of any summonses, both for compulsory service and to clarify military registration status, and as part of the wartime mobilization, which Putin has not yet signed a decree to end.

This data will be collected from military enlistment offices. The decree digitizing their databases was signed by Putin back in November 2022. As Defense Ministry officials told the Federation Council, various databases are used for this purpose, including those of the Interior Ministry, the Federal Tax Service, civil registries, and pension funds.

Source: Daniil Sotnikov, “Electronic summonses registry fully operational in Russia,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 9 May 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Independence Day

A roadside fireworks stand in Soledad, California, 28 June 2023. Photo by the Russian Reader

When issuing diplomas, colleges in Ingushetia now require graduates to sign a summons to the army or refuse to accept the conscription notice and face possible administrative and criminal charges, Fortanga was told by a source close to one college.

“To get a diploma, you need to sign a conscription notice. Otherwise, you will not receive a diploma no way no how. Either you accept the conscription notice, or you sign a waiver . That is, accepting the notice means you have to join the army, while turning it down means saying ‘Hello, prison, here I come,'” the source said.

According to the source, the practice was introduced after the director of the college in Nizhnie Achaluki reported, at a meeting involving the head of the republic Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov, that thirty students had been drafted from his institution into the army. Subsequently, military enlistment officers and government officials “jumped on the bandwagon,” the source claims.

Students are being forced to come to colleges in person to get their diplomas, the source added. That is, young men cannot receive them by mail or ask that they be handed over to a family member or a proxy.

When the graduate refuses to sign the conscription notice, a report is immediately drawn up and signed by witnesses. First-time offenders face administrative charges under Article 21.5 of the Administrative Offenses Code (i.e., “Non-fulfillment of military registration duties by citizens”) and a fine of 500 to 3,000 rubles. Repeat offenders face criminal charges under Article 328 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code (i.e., “Evasion of military and alternative civil service”) and a fine of up to 200,000 rubles, forced labor, arrest, or imprisonment for up to two years.

Ingush lawyer Kaloy Akhilgov noted that the legality of such a practice “depends on the procedure for issuing a summons.”

“Educational institutions can only serve conscription notices, not issue them themselves. That is, first the military enlistment office must send the notice to a specific citizen, and after that the organization can hand it to the student,” he explained.

For those who want to avoid receiving a military conscription notice , the lawyer recommended that after completing their bachelor’s or master’s degree, they take postgraduate leave until August 31 and file the relevant paperwork with the military enlistment office. “Then they should not be bothered during the [current] spring conscription drive. And such ‘automatic’ draft notices issued along with diplomas lose their significance,” he added.

Source: “Colleges in Ingushetia only issue diplomas with a summons to the army,” Fortanga, 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Marina Ken for the heads-up.

[…]

Mark, 26 years old: a former engineer turned waiter in Yerevan
Before I left Russia I was building a career: I was a senior fire and security systems engineer. Such people are needed everywhere: it’s a fairly good position. I worked in government agencies, so I was served my conscription notice directly at work. However, I had never served in the military: I had a deferment due to health reasons.

That was October seventh: I usually have a hard time remembering dates, but this was like in a movie since it divided my whole life into before and after. At night, I packed all my things and moved to another apartment, then I flew to Turkey and from there to Armenia.

It’s amazing: my grandfather is Armenian, but I had never been to Armenia before then. The authorities have even confirmed that I can get citizenship. But if I get it while I’m still eligible for military service, I will have to serve in the Armenian army for two years. And if you evade military service you can be banned from leaving the country or imprisoned. I went to the local draft board, and they told me straight up: come back in a year to get your citizenship. So that’s what I’ll do.

A short time before the mobilization, I was offered the chance to rent an apartment near Rybatskoye subway station in Petersburg for fifteen thousand rubles a month. I was sitting at the dacha, thinking about how I would rent this apartment, how I would invite friends over to my place—everything was good. But the next day the mobilization was announced, and my parents said to me, “Maybe you should leave?” I thought it over for a long time, and didn’t talk to anyone for several days. Then the conscription notice was delivered. Almost all of my friends supported me [in my decision to leave]. I had this conversation in the smoking room with a colleague, who told me, “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll sue. If push comes to shove, I’ll fight within the system.” In the end, he was drafted.

I had savings, so I didn’t work for six months. I tried to get a job as a technician or engineer in my field, but the old boys network is quite strong in Armenia: it is unlikely that they would hire a person off the street, and one who isn’t Armenian at that. And you need to know Armenian for any serious job. For a while I was depressed that I couldn’t find a job, that I had had everything squared away, but here I was nobody. I was a highly qualified specialist, but now I was unemployed. It was a big blow to my pride. At my old job, they waited another six months for me to return.

At first I went to work as a courier at Yandex Delivery. Maybe it is still possible to do the job on scooters and bicycles, but it is absolutely impossible. I had to walk 40-50 kilometers a day. I came home on the third day, soaked my feet in a basin, and sat there for several hours. There is an inadequate system of fines and impotent support staff that knows nothing. All couriers want to protest, both in Yerevan and in Moscow.

The delivery job was so hard on me that I even wanted to go home. I was in such a depressed state that the part of my brain that is responsible for the comfort zone was activated: “Yes, everything is fine, everything has already quieted down, and I have a home there.” I know several people who have returned [to Russia] after working such jobs. I even called my boss in Petersburg and asked if they’d hired someone to replace me, but they already had.

When you’re getting started in a country, I advise everyone to go to work as waiters. You have to carry plates and interact with people, but we all know how to do that. And you have to memorize the menu. I speak to foreign tourists in English or Russian, and I tell Armenians that I am learning the language, and they are always understanding. I tell them, “Come back in six months, and we’ll chat,” and they’re happy that I’m learning their language. Sometimes even Armenians who don’t know Armenian themselves come in and ask for a Russian menu. I even asked once, “How’s that?”

I think I lucked out: I’m treated well, we have a very friendly atmosphere, the cooks teach me Armenian, and everyone is always supportive and understanding. The money is enough to live on. And they treat me well as a Russian. Today, a client, a friend of the owner, gave me a teach yourself Armenian book in a beautiful paper bag printed with Armenian letters.

Very many young researchers and decent specialists have left Russia. This is sad, of course, but it is natural after such actions on the part of the state. It was pretty hard to swallow the whole thing. You can say it was pride, that, like, you’re going have to work in completely different jobs. I don’t like the buzzword “relocatees”—we are all migrants.

I am learning the language and I can already make myself understood: Armenian is not as difficult as it seems. When I learn the language, I will return to my profession, because it will stand me in good stead wherever I go. Naturally, emigration is not at all what I’d imagined. But this is our new home, and we have to learn to live here. Remarque has a book about emigration, Shadows in Paradise. A lot of people who also moved after wars became very strong personalities: it is an incredible experience. It is so intense that when you look through time into the past, you feel so much more mature, so different as a person, that you regard everything differently. So I’m even grateful to fate for these changes.

Source: Masha Koltsova, “‘I recommend everyone become a waiter after moving to a new country’: men who left Russia due to mobilization on changing professions and living a new life,” Current Time (Radio Svoboda), 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

A farewell ceremony was held at the Serafimovskoe Cemetery in St. Petersburg for four soldiers of the Neva Battalion who perished during the special military operation, the governor’s press service reported on July 3. The funeral was attended by the city’s head, Alexander Beglov, and the speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Alexander Belsky.

The deceased men—Mikhail Sokolov, Roman Galinsky, Mikhail Manushkin, and Sergei Isayko—were posthumously awarded the Order of Courage. In his speech, Beglov said that the men had been killed in heavy fighting.

“They are continuers of Russia’s military glory. We are proud of our fellow townsmen. Petersburg shall cherish their memory,” the governor said.

After the start of the special operation, the Smolny’s press service began publishing news about the deaths of Petersburgers in the Donbas, accompanying them with a mention of the condolences expressed by Beglov. Later, the release of such reports was abandoned for a long time. In December, Beglov unveiled a plaque on the facade of School No. 369 in memory of army officer Alexander Zhikharev, who perished in the SMO. In February, the governor and education minister Sergei Kravtsov met with Zhikharev’s relatives, and in March the school was named in his memory.

Source: “Petersburg says goodbye to four volunteers killed in SMO,” ZAKS.ru, 3 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

In the wake of Zhenya and Sveta’s kangaroo court hearing, what I’ve been thinking about for several days is that we forget the golden rule of all convicts—“Don’t believe, don’t be afraid, don’t ask”—and thus hand them the tool for coercing us.

You can’t show them your vulnerabilities or reveal your desires and fears. (Don’t ask!) This information will be used to intimidate and torture you. (Don’t be afraid!) Or it will be used for bargaining: they will promise to go lighter on you in exchange for your cooperation and will certainly deceive you. (Don’t believe!)

Source: Elena Efros (Facebook), 4 July 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. Ms. Efros, a well-known human rights activist, is the mother of imprisoned theater director Zhenya Berkovich. Thanks to Ivan Astashin for the heads-up.

How Russians Are Forcibly Conscripted

“Summer in Petersburg”: photo by Marina Varchenko

The Russian security forces have been increasingly organizing dragnets to sweep up potential army recruits. This is occurring amidst a full-scale war with Ukraine in which the Russian army has suffered heavy losses.

There are more and more accounts of these roundups. Mediazona, for example, details how a 25-year-old Muscovite, employed in the IT business in Moscow City, was lured to a meeting with police officers and military enlistment officers through the classified ads website Avito, on which the young man was selling headphones. He was quickly sent to serve in the Moscow Region, despite being diagnosed with bronchial asthma.

The Movement of Conscientious Objectors recounts how the police simply broke into the apartment of conscripts Yevgeny Komarov and Ivan Dubenko and sent them to the assembly point. Dubenko was first strangled, and then, threatened with rape, forced to sign his military service card, as required for conscription.

Another story relayed by the Movement involves a young man with hypertension and anxiety-depressive disorder who went to the military enlistment office to undergo a medical examination and get a postponement, but instead was sent to the assembly point the very same day. Mahmudjon Nurov, on the contrary, was simply detained at the Izmailovskaya metro station and immediately sent to the military enlistment office. In the Kursk Region, the military commissars took an even simpler approach: they allegedly assembled everyone whom the medical commission had declared unfit for service, confiscated their telephones, and sent them off to serve in the army.

The Russian army needs conscripts: during this draft, which lasts until July 15, the authorities have been charged with drafting 150,000 thousand men, and so the military enlistment officers have teamed up with the police to go out and catch potential recruits. The practice is, in fact, illegal, and the prosecutor’s office has repeatedly confirmed this, but the law has not prevented police officers from going to factories and shops in search of young men allegedly fit for service. Fortunately, so far no one has received electronic draft notices through Gosuslugi [the Russian state services website]: they should begin to be issued during the next conscription campaign.

Here is how you can protect yourself as much as possible in the current circumstances:

• Do not go to the military enlistment office in person. Everything you need to learn from them can be done by mail or by an acquaintance with a power of attorney.

• If you are served a draft summons in person (military enlistment offices retain this right), refuse to take it.

• Don’t sign anything and seek legal assistance. You can file a lawsuit appealing mobilization and conscription orders through the bot “I’m Not Going!” While the court is considering your suit, you cannot be inducted into the army.

• Fill out an application for alternative civilian service in advance. Both those who have been served with draft notices and those who have been mobilized have such an opportunity.

Source: “How are Russians forcibly enlisted in the army? What should you do if they try to enlist you?” I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 29 June 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

“Defending the Motherland is a profession — a real job.” Frequent TRR contributor Sergey Abashin photographed this Russian army recruiting poster (and several others) in Moscow earlier today.

The Fire in Uryupinsk and Elsewhere

Guryanov Sergei @Segozavr
A man backed his car up to the building housing the draft board [conscription office] and began tossing Molotov cocktails. 100 square meters were destroyed by fire. Uryupinsk, Volgograd Region, Russia, 26.09.2022.

Source: Twitter. Translated by the Russian Reader. “The name of this town is known to many Russian people as a synonym for ‘backwater town.’ This usage became widespread after the popular Soviet film Destiny of a Man. The film was based on a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov, and Uryupinsk was the place of the action, shown as an inconspicuous provincial town.”

A screenshot of the visuals in Mr. Stupin’s original post

In Moscow’s Kosino-Ukhtomsky district, housing authority employees and police officers, without showing their IDs, have been breaking open front doors in the staircases of residential buildings in order to serve residents with summonses to the military enlistment office! Some residents have already been issued threats that the electrical wires to their apartments will be cut if the men do not open the door to receive a summons!

Source: Yevgeny Stupin, Facebook, 26 September 2022. Thanks to Alexander Kynev for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

A telephone call I got yesterday from a female acquaintance has made me think about the economic consequences of the “mogilization” [literally, “grave-ization,” a play on the word “mobilization”]. I confirmed her fears that her son would be among the first to be mobilized. And that they would come looking for him first at his registered address, then at his workplace. Consequently, the solution to his problem would be to quit his job and go live somewhere in the boondocks for a year, even if there was no work there.

And now look — not only those who are called up will vanish from workplaces, but also those who dodge the draft. To get the three hundred thousand men declared [by Putin as the goal of his “partial mobilization”], they have to slap the asses of at least a million men with draft notices and dragnets. I’m not an economist and I cannot even estimate numerically what kind of blow to the country’s GDP will be caused by the withdrawal of at least half a million employees.

By the way, the mobilized must be fired [by law]. It is not very clear whether their jobs will be kept for them in any way. But [officially] they will not be listed as on leave, but as having been called up from the reserves to military training camps. They will simply be dismissed from their jobs, and they will have to be paid in full.

Really simple vacancies can be filled by migrants from Central Asia, but it is another matter whether they will go and fill them. Currently, the exchange rate has been maintained at a level that is favorable to migrant workers, but as soon as the volume of imports grows (and it will grow: there will be other sources, gray market goods/parallel imports, and so on), this rate will inevitably begin to sink. Consequently, the economy will take a simultaneous triple hit around December:

1) On December 5, a complete ban on the delivery of Russian crude oil to the EU will come into effect;
2) hundreds of thousands of people will be laid off in October, November, and December;
3) and the exchange rate will go crazy.

By the way, state-funded and quasi-state-funded organizations will face the biggest problems. Petersburgers are no stranger to it, but the snow will definitely not be removed this year, either.

That’s my economic forecast for you. It’s going to be a clusterfuck, my fellow Russians.

Source: Vladimir Volokhonsky, Facebook, 22 September 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization, which is actually a total mobilization. His decree sets no restrictions on age, qualifications, regions, and the number of people mobilized. Already today, we see that everyone is being called up.

Source: Navalny LIVE, YouTube, 22 September 2022. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader. The video has already been viewed over 2.6 million times since it was posted. It has no subtitles in English, but the message from the lawyer in the video is clear and simple: there is no such thing as a “partial” mobilization, so all draft-age men must avoid being called up and serving at all costs, especially since Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine is illegal and criminal.

Dmitry Lyamin: Hero of the Resistance

Dmitry Lyamin’s headshot from Odnoklassniki.ru (“Classmates.ru”

If there is an actual “Russian anti-war movement,” this is what it looks like: Dmitry Lyamin, accused of torching a military conscription office in Shuya, the third largest town in the Ivanovo Region. Lyamin has been transferred from Ivanovo to the notorious Butyrka remand prison in Moscow, allegedly, so that he can undergo a psychiatric examination at the equally notorious Serbsky Institute. According to former political prisoner Ivan Astashin, who now spends all his waking hours helping the new wave of political prisoners in Russia and publicizing their cases, there are rumors among the legal community that the criminal charge Lyamin faces will be changed from “destruction of property” (Article 167 in the Russian Federal Criminal Code) to “terrorist act” (Article 205), a much more serious charge that carries a penalty of up to twenty years in prison.

Source: Ivan Astashin, Facebook, 29 June 2022

People and Nature: Ukrainians Face Deportation and Conscription by Russian Forces

Ukrainian activists in the Eastern Human Rights Group are using social media to build up a register of people forcibly deported from Russian-occupied areas.

A bot has been launched on Telegram (@come_back_to_ukraine_bot) to contact citizens removed to Russia.

Deporting people against their will is a war crime. International and local human rights organisations, and the Ukrainian government, say there is mounting evidence that Russia is doing so on a large scale.

The Russian defence ministry said on 18 June that more than 1.9 million people, including 307,000 children, had been evacuated from Ukraine to Russia since the full-scale invasion on 24 February. Ukrainian activists deny Russian claims that all evacuees have left Ukraine voluntarily.

“If we don’t find how to help them, Russia will erase the Ukrainian identity of these children,” Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties responded.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group in April protested against a scheme to resettle residents of Mariupol in the most inhospitable and distant areas of Russia.

Halya Coynash reported that the Mariupol council had drawn attention to a leaflet distributed to Mariupol residents “inviting” them to the Russian Far East. She commented:

First, they destroy a successful and warm city on the Sea of Azov, and then they drive its residents to Siberia or Sakhalin to work as cheap labour.

Mariupol’s mayor, Vadim Boichenko, said that he has a list of 33,500 residents forcibly deported either to Russia or to the Donbass “republics,” and is coordinating rescue efforts.

Coynash also published details of the “filtration” of residents in the occupied areas by Russian forces, with those considered “unreliable” being sent to detention camps in the Donbass “republics.”

Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said last month that 210,000 children, and more than 1 million other Ukrainians, had been deported against their will. Reuters reported these numbers, saying they could not independently verify them, and that the Kremlin had not responded to a request for comment.

Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said earlier this month that a war crimes case was being built up relating to the deportation of children to Russia.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in its report on human rights violations in Ukraine between 24 February and 12 April, said that its Mission had received “numerous consistent reports” on forced deportations from the occupied territories to Russia. It said that Russia had denied these accusations, but added:

If (some of) these deportations were forcible (including because Russia created a coercive environment in which those civilians had no other choice than to leave for Russia) and as they necessarily concerned civilians who had fallen into the power of Russia as an occupying power, this violates in each case International Humanitarian Law and constitutes a war crime.

Mateusz Morawiecki, prime minister of Poland, said on a visit to Kyiv this month that deportations – which recalled Poles’ experience under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union – are “an exceptional crime, about which there is almost complete silence in western Europe.”

The Eastern Human Rights Group, set up in 2014 by labour activists in Donbass and now operating from Kyiv, decided to work on a register of deported citizens after appealing unsuccessfully for the Ukrainian government to take action.

“Our team lobbied repeatedly for setting up a state structure to deal with repatriation, but, as happens quite often, the government did not listen,” the group stated on 13 June. “We decided to take action on the issue ourselves, and at a non-government level we are working on the issue of repatriating Ukrainians.”

□ Two all-European public zoom calls about the Russian-occupied areas are being held on Monday 4 July and Thursday 14 July, on which Ukrainian activists will report on what can be done to support civil society there. The initiative is supported by the European Network in Solidarity with Ukraine. You need to register in advance to participate.

□ The Eastern Human Rights Group has also reported on forcible military mobilisation in the Donbass “republics,” and use of the death penalty there. Here are three recent Facebook posts. With thanks to Anna Yegorova for the translations.

Forced mobilisation on the rise again (15 June)

For the last three weeks, forced mobilisation in the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions has slowed down, due to active protests by mothers, sisters, and spouses of the forcibly mobilized.

However, the Ministry of National Security in the Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” swiftly suppressed women’s protests, as we recorded the detention of several women in Yenakievo and Rovenky.

Since last Saturday, military patrols searching for men of conscription age in the cities of occupied Donbas have become more active with men being detained in the streets again. (The detentions are not as massive as in March, but that is understandable: there are simply not as many men as there were in March.)

This new stage of forced mobilisation is associated with the need to send new manpower to fight in Donbass.

Forced mobilisation has again affected workers at enterprises, and enterprise managers have spoken out against it. The administrations of the “Luhansk people’s republic” and “Donetsk people’s republic” said that “construction brigades” [a term dating back to the Soviet times, usually designating student groups as “volunteers” to work on farms and plants] from the Russian Federation would soon arrive to replace the workers [so that the latter could be send to the battlefield].

“People’s republic” soldiers defecting to Ukraine (23 June)

Over the past three weeks, the so-called “people’s militia” of the Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” has increased military patrols in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, due to the increasing number of defections from AK-1 and AK-2 units. Forcibly mobilised people, even after they have been dressed in uniform, seek opportunities to escape from the Russian convoy escorting them to the front line.

Frequent defections became public thanks to women in [the occupied territories of] Donetsk and Luhansk reporting to Vera Yastrebova, the head of the Eastern Human Rights group.

One woman said that her brother escaped with a group of mobilised men on the way to the front line, and now they are wanted by the local “authorities.” There are also cases when mobilised residents of the two “people’s republics” jump off trains that take them to the front line, following a brief training in the Russian Federation.

Over the past three weeks, there have been more than 100 cases of defections from the “LPR” and “DPR,” a source from the DPR told us.

Luhansk “people’s republic” is about to introduce death penalty (24 June)

By Vera Yastrebova. A working group is preparing to change the criminal “law” of the Luhansk “people’s republic” to introduce a new type of punishment – the death penalty, I have been told by sources there.

A decision was first made back in 2021, when the Kremlin decided to create unitary “legislation” for the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” and essentially rewrite the laws in Luhansk to match those of Donetsk. But they haven’t had time to do that.

Now the principle has been agreed, and changes are being developed very quickly. The haste is due to the fact that the Luhansk “people’s republic” will be able to apply the death penalty to Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The issue of the “death penalty” will be further pushed by the Kremlin, in order to force Western countries to engage in direct negotiations with the leaders of the “LPR” and “DPR,” my sources say.

□ Why is Ukrainian resistance invisible to you? An appeal to supporters of the Stop the War Coalition

□ ‘We are surviving, but not living’ under Russian occupation – People & Nature, 13 June

□ There will be all-European public zoom calls, on Monday 4 July and Thursday 14 July, with Ukrainian activists supporting people in the occupied areas. Details and link to registration here.

Source: Simon Pirani, “Ukrainians face forcible deportation and conscription by Russian forces,” People and Nature, 27 June 2022. Reprinted here with the author’s kind permission

Convictions

https://vimeo.com/197503611

Convictions, doc, 2016

Password: beliefs

The 15th of May is Conscientious Objectors’ Day.

We started to make this film in 2014 during the annexation of Crimea by Russia. it seemed that by 2022 only the epigraph would remain relevant.

“You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men.”

Watching the first war crimes trial in Ukraine over Vadim Shishimarin, it becomes quite obvious that this war is also being waged by children under the control of vile old men.

I understand how and why Russian guys from the provinces ended up in Ukraine.

Source: Tatiana Chistova, Facebook, 15 May 2022. Thanks to Jenya Kulakova for the heads-up and so much more. NB. This film is freely viewable on Vimeo only today, 15 May, apparently. Since it is a “private” video, I was unable to embed it here. UPDATE (17 MAY 2022) The film seems to be indefinitely viewable, so please take the opportunity to watch it using the URL and password listed, above. An acquaintance described it as “deadly serious and very funny too.” ||| TRR

Molotov Cocktail Party

Video still of burning military recruitment office in Moscow Region.
Courtesy of Moskovsky Komsomolets via the Moscow Times

Since the war in Ukraine broke out, protesters have set fire to military enlistment offices in several regions of Russia. The media has reported at least five such incidents. The people detained in these cases told police that they were trying to disrupt the spring recruitment campaign.

On February 28, a 21-year-old local resident set fire to the military enlistment office in Lukhovitsy, Moscow Region, to protest the war’s outbreak. After he was detained, he said that he wanted to destroy the archive containing the personal files of conscripts in order to prevent mobilization. Two weeks later, he escaped from the police station.

In March, military enlistment offices caught fire in Voronezh, Sverdlovsk Region, and Ivanovo Region. In all cases, local residents threw Molotov cocktails in the windows of these offices. The young men who started the fires in the Sverdlovsk and Ivanovo regions were detained. Both of them explained their actions by saying that they wanted to disrupt the draft campaign amid the hostilities in Ukraine. Moreover, persons unknown had scrawled anti-war appeals on local government buildings and shops in several towns in the Ivanovo Region before the blaze.

In April, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the military enlistment office in the village of Zubova Polyana in Mordovia. In this case, the protesters achieved their goal: the recruitment campaign was stopped. The rooms in the office where the data of conscripts were stored caught on fire.

The spring draft in Russia began on April 1 and will end on July 15. 134,500 young men are scheduled to be drafted into the army.

The Russian authorities have repeatedly claimed that conscripted soldiers will not be sent to fight in Ukraine. However, on March 9, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged for the first time that conscripts were fighting in Ukraine, and reported that several conscript soldiers had been captured.

On February 24, university student Anastasia Levashova threw a Molotov cocktail at an antiwar rally in Moscow. The court sentenced her to two years in prison for violating Article 318.1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, which criminalizes the use of violence against authorities.

Source: Moscow Times (Russian Service), 21 April 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader.

“One Must Serve the Motherland, I Say!”: Court Extends Alexei Gaskarov’s Arrest in Bolotnaya Square Case

“One Must Serve the Motherland, I Say!”
Basmanny District Court Extends the Arrest of Bolotnaya Case Suspect and Anti-Fascist Alexei Gaskarov
October 3, 2013
Yegor Skovoroda
Russkaya Planeta

 

gaskarov_sud_main_640Alexei Gaskarov in court, June 26, 2013. Photo: Ilya Pitalyov / RIA Novosti

 On Tuesday, October 1, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court extended until February 6, 2014, the arrest of Alexei Gaskarov, whom police investigators suspect of involvement in the “mass riots” on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012. Gaskarov has been charged with violating Article 212, Section 2 (participation in mass riots) and Article 318, Section 1 (use of violence against authorities) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

February 6, 2014, is the date to which the investigation of the events on Bolotnaya Square has now been officially extended. Earlier this week, the court extended the arrests of the other defendants whose cases have not yet been submitted to the court. Ilya Gushchin, Alexander Margolin, Dmitry Rukavishnikov, Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev will also remain in pre-trial custody until February 6.

Another defendant, pensioner Elena Kokhtareva, has been released under her own recognizance. The case of Udaltsov and Razvozzhayev, whom investigators have accused of organizing the “mass riots” (a violation of Article 212, Section 1 of the Criminal Code), has been separated from that of the other defendants.

Investigator Alexei Chistyakov asked the Basmanny District Court to extend Gaskarov’s arrest for another four months, as the investigators have established that Gaskarov “used violence” against Igor Ibatulin, an officer with the Second Tactical Regiment of the Moscow Police, and a soldier by the name of Bulychev.

“In defiance of society’s moral norms, Gaskarov committed the crime in the presence of a significant number of people, taking advantage of numerical and physical superiority, and showing a clear disregard for the authorities. Moreover, his role in this case was particularly active and most aggressive,” Chistyakov read aloud to the court.

According to Chistyakov, Gaskarov presented a flight risk, since before his arrest “he did not live at his registered domicile, led a secretive lifestyle, spent the night at different locations and used various conspiratorial techniques.” Gaskarov should, therefore, be kept in a pre-trial detention facility.

During the hearing, Svetlana Sidorkina, Gaskarov’s lawyer, asked the court to enter character references submitted by the newspaper Zhukovskie Vesti and the Zhukovsky People’s Council into the record, as well as screenshots of a video recording from the case file. These stills show a police officer kicking Gaskarov in the face as Gaskarov lies on the ground.

Chistyakov and the prosecutor, Karasev, did not object to the character references being entered into the record, but they strongly objected to the shot breakdown of the video.

“The actions of law enforcement officers are not at issue in this hearing,” said Chistyakov.

Judge Artur Karpov, a man with a bald skull, agreed with their arguments and refused to enter the images into the record.

“And why is that you were found only partly fit for military service?” Judge Karpov asked, suddenly digressing from the tedious review of the case file.

“For medical reasons, but I can’t remember what exactly,” Gaskarov replied.

“How is it you don’t remember? Everyone remembers the reason they didn’t go into the army, but you don’t?”

“It was ten years ago. It had something to do with my eyesight, with intracranial pressure and something else. But now I just—“

“You just got over all those things? When did that happen? Before you turned twenty-eight?”*

“I wasn’t keeping track.”

“You weren’t keeping track. . . You should have served the Motherland,” the judge muttered.

“I wouldn’t object to serving in the army in exchange for being released from jail,” the defendant laughed.

“In exchange for working as a journalist?” After reading the character reference from the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper, Judge Karpov had for some reason decided that Gaskarov works there. “One needs to serve in the army. Anyone can be a journalist, but probably not just everyone can serve the Motherland. Why this ‘in exchange for’ right off the bat? One must serve the Motherland, I say!”

Judge Karpov was unrelenting.

“Down in Dagestan, there is a waiting list to get into the army. Being a journalist is easy. You get up when you like, go to sleep when you like, go to work when you like.”

After this emotional outburst, lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina moved that the court change Gaskarov’s measure of restraint to one not involving deprivation of liberty—to house arrest or release on bail.

“Yes, I think this would be possible,” Gaskarov replied, smiling, to the judge’s question about what he thought about the motion.

Karasev and Chistyakov categorically stated that only if Gaskarov were in a pre-trial detention facility could the investigation proceed unhindered. Judge Karpov agreed with the prosecution on this point as well and, after a recess, ordered Gaskarov’s arrest extended until February 6.

When Gaskarov spoke to the court arguing against his arrest, Chistyakov sat motionless, his hands folded in front of him, like a sphinx.

_____

Alexei Gaskarov’s argument in the Basmanny District Court:

I do not agree with the extension of my arrest and wanted to draw attention to the following things. First, I am being charged with violating Articles 212 and 318. Article 318 belongs to the category of moderately severe crimes for which the period of pre-trial detention may not exceed six months. Article 212, which criminalizes “involvement in mass riots,” stipulates more stringent sanctions, up to a year in pre-trial detention. I have a copy of my indictment, dated April 28. As of today, there has been no other indictment. According to this indictment, all the [criminal] actions that the investigator has just listed were then deemed violations of Article 318 by him.

Since the extension the investigator is now requesting means that I will have spent nine months in detention, that is, more than the statutory period of six months, I do not agree with this extension.

With regard to Article 212, I would like to return to the question of the grounds for charging me with violating it. Because even if you go by my indictment in the case file, it turns out I am accused of participation in mass riots. However, if you look at Article 212 itself, it covers mass riots “attended by violence, pogroms, arson, the destruction of property, the use of firearms, explosives, or explosive devices, and also armed resistance to government representatives.”

There is also Article 8 of the Criminal Code, which clearly states that a deed can be deemed criminal if it is fully consistent with “all the elements” of a crime, as described in one or another article in the Code. Accordingly, not all the elements of the crime, as indicated in Article 212, are included in my indictment. The article does not say that only one element or half the elements are enough. “All the elements” must be present.

Furthermore, the investigation finds that there was violence, arsons, and pogroms there [on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012], but I have not been charged with arson and pogroms. I have been charged only with violence against police officers. But Article 318 already covers these actions, and it is unclear how one and the same action can be deemed to constitute now one crime, now another.

On the other hand, if you look at the article dealing with mass riots, it does indeed say that resisting police officers is a constituent element of the crime, but there it stipulates that this must be armed resistance. But there is nothing in the charges brought against me indicating that I used a weapon or objects that could be used as a weapon.

I ask the court to take note of this indictment, because it serves as the grounds for the decision to extend or change the measures of restraint.

There are different sorts of evidence in the indictment and the criminal case file, but they only touch on Article 318, not Article 212. There is no clear indication there which of my actions could be deemed a violation of Article 212.

Moreover, why did we want to enter these photographs [of Gaskarov being beaten by riot police on May 6, 2012 — Russkaya Planeta] into the record? They simply indicate that the situation was quite complicated. The way the indictment is worded implies that if you see a uniformed police officer, he is absolutely within the law and cannot do anything illegal. By entering these photographs into the record, we want to show that the situation was complicated.

As for the actions committed there, I don’t even deny that I pulled one officer by the leg, and another by the arm. But only Article 318 covers all these actions. And so I ask the court not to extend [my arrest] for more than six months.

That is all I have to say.

* In Russia, men are subject to military conscription between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven —Translator.