LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) – The editor of Russia’s staunchly pro-Kremlin state news channel RT expressed outrage on Saturday that recruitment agents were sending out call-up documents to the wrong men, as frustration grew for a military mobilization.
Wednesday’s announcement of Russia’s first public mobilization since World War II to shore up its faltering war in Ukraine has sparked a rush for the border, the arrests of more than 1,000 protesters and unrest among the general population.
He is also drawing criticism from the Kremlin’s own official supporters, something almost unheard of in Russia since the invasion began.
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“It has been announced that privates can be hired up to the age of 35. The subpoenas go to people in their 40s,” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on her Telegram channel.
“They are infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite. As if Kyiv had sent them.”
In another rare sign of turmoil, the defense ministry said the deputy minister in charge of logistics, four-star general Dmitri Bulgakov, had been replaced “for transfer to another role”. He did not give details.
Russia looks set to formally annex a swath of Ukrainian territory next week, according to major Russian news agencies. This follows so-called referendums in four occupied regions of Ukraine that began on Friday. Kyiv and the West have denounced the votes as a farce and said the results in favor of annexation are predetermined.
MORE THAN 740 ARRESTS
For the mobilization effort, officials have said 300,000 soldiers are needed, with priority given to those with recent military experience and life skills. The Kremlin denies reports by two foreign-based Russian media outlets that the real target is more than 1 million.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has repeatedly urged Russians not to fight, said pro-Moscow authorities knew they were sending people to their deaths.
“Fleeing this criminal mobilization is better than being maimed and then having to answer in court for participating in a war of aggression,” he said in Russian in a video address on Saturday.
Russia officially counts millions of former conscripts as reservists – the majority of the male population of fighting age – and Wednesday’s decree announcing “partial mobilization” gave no criteria for who would be called up.
Reports have emerged of men without military experience or previous draft age being issued with draft papers, adding to the outrage that has revived dormant and banned anti-war demonstrations.
More than 1,300 protesters were arrested in 38 cities on Wednesday and by Saturday evening more than 740 were detained in more than 30 towns and cities from St. Petersburg to Siberia, according to the independent monitoring group OVD-Info.
Reuters footage from St Petersburg showed police in helmets and riot gear pinning protesters to the ground and kicking one of them before herding them into vans.
Earlier, the head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, announced that he had written to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with a request to “urgently resolve” the issues.
His Telegram post criticized the way the exemptions were applied and listed cases of improper enlistment, including nurses and midwives with no military experience.
“Some (recruiters) hand out the call-up papers at 2 in the morning, as if they think we’re all draft dodgers,” he said.
‘CANNON FOOT’
On Friday, the defense ministry listed some sectors where employers could nominate staff for exemptions.
There has been a particular outcry among ethnic minorities in remote and impoverished areas of Siberia, where Russia’s professional armed forces have long recruited disproportionately.
Since Wednesday, people have been queuing for hours to cross into Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Finland or Georgia, fearing Russia will close its borders, although the Kremlin says reports of an exodus are exaggerated.
Asked by United Nations reporters on Saturday why so many Russians were leaving, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed to the right to freedom of movement.
The governor of Buryatia, a region bordering Mongolia and home to an ethnic Mongolian minority, acknowledged that some had received documents incorrectly and said those without military experience or medical exemptions would be exempt.
On Saturday, Tsakhia Elbegdorj, Mongolia’s president until 2017 and now head of the World Mongolian Federation, promised those fleeing the draft, particularly three Russian Mongolian groups, a warm welcome and bluntly called on Putin to end with the war
“The Buryat Mongols, the Tuva Mongols and the Kalmyk Mongols … have been used as nothing more than cannon fodder,” he said in a video, wearing a ribbon in Ukrainian yellow and blue.
“Today you are fleeing brutality, cruelty and likely death. Tomorrow you will begin to liberate your country from dictatorship.”
The mobilization, and the hasty organization of votes in the occupied territories, came shortly after a Ukrainian blitzkrieg in the Kharkiv region this month, Moscow’s sharpest setback in the war.
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Reuters report; Editing by Peter Graff, Frances Kerry, David Ljunggren and Daniel Wallis
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