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Muscovites protest against mobilization
When protesters gathered in central Moscow on Saturday to voice their opposition to the partial mobilisation of reservists announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, police acted swiftly to place them in detention.
Over 1,300 Detained as Russians Protest Mobilization
On Wednesday, protests against President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of a military mobilisation for the conflict in Ukraine took place across Russia, from the Far East to the capital Moscow, and more than 1,300 people were detained nationwide.
At least 1,386 protestors have reportedly been held so far nationally, with the capital city of Moscow accounting for at least half of the total, according to the independent OVD-Info police monitor.
It was also mentioned that most of those held were female.
Regardless of their level of expertise, police in Moscow reportedly gave some detainees summonses to the military enrollment office.
The Vesna opposition movement and supporters of imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Russians countrywide to protest the Kremlin’s decision to increase its soldiers in Ukraine with a “partial” mobilisation on Wednesday evening.
Local accounts state that the first protests were held in Siberia and the Far East, where scores were detained, frequently only minutes after the demonstrations had started.
Small protests were held at Ulan-Ude, the Buryatia republic’s capital; Yakutsk, the Sakha republic’s capital; and Khabarovsk and Irkutsk, both in the Far East.
No war! protesters were spotted in Ulan-Ude carrying handwritten signs. No mobilisation! and Our husbands, fathers, and brothers oppose the murder of other fathers and spouses.
According to local Telegram news station Ulitsa Barkhatnaya, among the 15 individuals held soon after the protest began in the Siberian city of Tomsk were a female protester holding a banner that read, “Hug me if you are likewise terrified.”
A video posted to social media from Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia, showed a protester yelling, “I don’t want to die for Putin or for you!”
Then, protests spread throughout the cities in Russia’s Volga-Ural region. According to OVD-Info, at least 45 persons were detained in Yekaterinburg, the main city in the area, while dozens more were detained in Perm, Chelyabinsk, and Ufa, the capital of the Bashkortostan Republic.
Several hundred people gathered on Moscow’s main Stary Arbat thoroughfare amid a dense police presence. There were demonstrators shouting “No war!” Videos posted to social media have the following messages: “Let our children live!” and “Send Putin to the trenches!”
Videos from the event show that when demonstrators congregated close to St. Isaac’s Square in St. Petersburg, police rapidly surrounded them. Others, though, carried on their march through the city’s core.
Rallies were also held in the southern city of Krasnodar, the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, and the city of Arkhangelsk in the Far North.
A small group of female protestors carried signs reading “Peace to the globe” as they marched along the city’s main streets in Kazan, the republic of Tatarstan’s capital. The initial rally was dispersed with cries of “No to mobilisation!
According to Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, 300,000 Russian reservists are anticipated to be called up for military duty throughout the war.
However, given the ambiguous language of the mobilisation edict, the mobilisation attempts may go farther, according to human rights attorney Pavel Chikov, who has been assisting Russian soldiers who oppose the war.
