In Russia, tears
and hugs for those called up
One man says he did not expect to deploy to Ukraine a day after Putin issued his order.
A day after President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster his troops in Ukraine, scenes of tearful families bidding farewell to men departing from military mobilization centers in Russia appeared on social media.
Video on Twitter from the eastern city of Neryungri in Siberia showed men emerging from a stadium. Before boarding buses, the men hugged family members waiting outside, many crying and some covering their mouths with their hands in grief. A man held a child up to the window of one bus for a last look.
In Moscow, women cried as they hugged men at another mobilization point and made the sign of the cross. A 25-year-old who gave only his first name, Dmitry, received a hug from his father, who told him, “Be careful,” as they parted.
Dmitry told the Russian media company Ostorozhno Novosti he did not expect to be called up and shipped out so quickly, especially since he is a student.
“No one told me anything in the morning. They gave me the draft notice that I should come here at 3 p.m. We waited 1.5 hours, then the enlistment officer came and said that we are leaving now,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh great!’ I went outside and started calling my parents, brother, all friends of mine to tell that they take me.”
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, in some of his harshest comments in the nearly 7-month-old war, lashed out at Russians succumbing to the pressure to serve in the armed forces and those who haven’t spoken out against the war. In his nightly video address, he switched from his usual Ukrainian language to Russian to directly tell Russian citizens they are being “thrown to their deaths.”
“You are already accomplices in all these crimes, murders and torture of Ukrainians,” Zelensky said, wearing a black T-shirt with the words in English: “We Stand with Ukraine,” instead of his signature olive drab T-shirt. He said Russians’ options to survive are to “protest, fight back, run away or surrender to Ukrainian captivity.”
Western leaders derided Putin’s order as an act of weakness and desperation. More than 1,300 Russians were arrested in antiwar demonstrations Wednesday after the order was announced, according to the independent Russian human rights group OVD-Info. Organizers said more protests were planned for Saturday.
Putin’s partial call-up of 300,000 reservists was short on details, so much so that the Russian military announced Thursday that it had set up a call center to answer questions.
In Washington, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said the U.S. believes it will take Russia time to train and equip the new troops and doing so may not solve command-and-control, logistics and morale issues.
Concerns about a potentially wider draft sent some Russians scrambling to buy plane tickets to flee the country, and Zelensky said Thursday that the Russian military is preparing to draft up to a million men. A Kremlin spokesman earlier denied such claims.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that anyone who “courageously opposes Putin’s regime and therefore puts himself in the greatest danger” can apply for asylum in Germany.
Pro-Moscow authorities in four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine plan voter referendums starting Friday on becoming part of Russia — a move that could expand the war and follows the Kremlin’s playbook from its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula after a similar referendum. Most of the world considers the 2014 annexation of Crimea illegal.
Voting in Ukraine’s Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions is scheduled to last through Tuesday. Foreign leaders have called the votes illegitimate and nonbinding.
In Luhansk, billboards reading, “With Russia Forever” and “Our Choice-Russia,” appeared on the streets, while volunteers distributed ribbons in Russian flag colors and posters declaring, “Russia is the future. Participate in the referendum!”
Russian and Ukrainian forces kept up their missile and artillery barrages.
Russian missile strikes in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia left one person dead and five wounded, Ukrainian officials said. Officials in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk said Ukrainian shelling killed at least six people.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy of the Ukrainian president’s office, said a hotel in Zaporizhzhia was struck and rescuers were trying to free people trapped in rubble. The governor of the mostly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, Oleksandr Starukh, said Russian forces had targeted infrastructure and damaged apartment buildings in the Ukrainian-held city.
One person was reported killed overnight during Russian shelling in Nikopol.
