Month: April 2022

The Associated Press

War in Ukraine fuels fears among draft-age Russian youths

The Associated Press – April 1, 2022

As Moscow’s forces bog down in Ukraine, many young Russians of draft age are increasingly jittery about the prospect of being sent into combat. Making those fears particularly acute is an annual spring conscription that begins Friday and aims to round up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pledged at a meeting of the military brass this week that the new recruits won’t be sent to front lines or “hot spots.”

But the statement was met with skepticism by many in Russia who remember the separatist wars in the southern republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, when thousands of poorly trained young men were killed.

“I don’t trust them when they say they won’t send conscripts into combat. They lie all the time,” said Vladislav, a 22-year-old who is completing his studies and fears he could face the draft immediately after graduation. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing reprisals.

All Russian men aged 18-27 must serve one year in the military, but a large share avoid the draft for health reasons or deferments granted to university students. The share of men who avoid the draft is particularly big in Moscow and other major cities.

Even as President Vladimir Putin and his officials say that conscripts aren’t involved in what Russian authorities call “the special military operation in Ukraine,” many appeared to have been taken prisoner during its initial days. Videos emerged from Ukraine of captured Russians, some being shown calling their parents, and were put on social media.

The mother of one of the prisoners said she recognized her 20-year-old draftee son in a video even though he was shown blindfolded.

“I recognized him by his lips, by his chin. You know, I would have recognized him by his fingers,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Lyubov, for security reasons. “I breastfed him. I raised him.”

The Defense Ministry was forced to walk back its statements and acknowledge that some conscripts were sent to Ukraine “by mistake” and were taken prisoner while serving with a supply unit away from the front.

There have been allegations that before the invasion, some conscripts were forced to sign military contracts that allowed them to be sent into combat — duty that is normally reserved only for volunteers in the army. Some of the captured soldiers said they were told by their commanding officers that they were going to a military exercise but suddenly found themselves fighting in Ukraine.

Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, spoke in early March about an entire company of 100 men who were forced to sign such contracts and were sent into the combat zone — and only four survived. Military officials did not comment on her allegation.

Svetlana Agapitova, the human rights commissioner in St. Petersburg, said Wednesday that relatives of seven soldiers had written to her to complain the men had been forced to sign the contract and sent to Ukraine against their will. She said two of them already had been brought back to Russia.

In recent years, the Kremlin has emphasized increasing the share of volunteer contract soldiers as it sought to modernize the army and improve its readiness. The force of 1 million now has over 400,000 contract soldiers, including 147,000 in the infantry. If the war drags on, those numbers could be insufficient to sustain the operations.

The Kremlin could eventually face a choice: Keep fighting with a limited number of troops and see the offensive stall, or try to replenish the ranks with a broader draft and risk public outrage that could fuel anti-draft sentiment and destabilize the political situation. Such a scenario occurred during the fighting in Chechnya.

Dmitry, a 25-year-old IT expert, has a deferment that should keep him out of the draft for medical reasons. But he’s still nervous like many others, fearing authorities could abruptly waive some deferments to bolster the military.

“I hate the war. I think it’s a total disaster,” said Dmitry, who also asked that he not be identified by has last name, fearing reprisals. “I fear that the government could change the rules and I could face the draft. They also were saying for months that they wouldn’t attack Ukraine, so why should I trust what they say about the draft now?”

Proposed legislation would facilitate the draft by allowing military recruiters to call up conscripts more easily, but the bill has been put on hold for now.

Still, it added to the public’s anxiety.

Alexei Tabalov, a lawyer who advises conscripts, said medical panels at recruitment offices often admit youths who should be exempt from service because of illness. Now, he added, their attitudes could grow even tougher.

“It’s quite probable that doctors may shut their eyes to conscripts’ illnesses and declare them fit for military duty,” Tabalov said.

In addition to lowering the medical standard for draftees, there are fears that the government could try to impose some sort of martial law that would ban Russian men from leaving the country and, like Ukraine, force them to fight.

“We have received a lot of calls from people fearing mobilization,” Tabalov said. “People now are afraid of everything in this situation. No one even thought before about the need to analyze the law on mobilization.”

The Kremlin has strongly denied any such plans, and military officials insist the army has enough contract soldiers to serve in Ukraine. Still, many Russians remain skeptical of the officials’ denials, given their track record.

“What kind of trust could there be if Putin says one day that conscripts will not be sent there … and then the Defense Ministry recognizes that they were there?” Tabalov asked.

An existing law allows for a 21-month alternative civil service in hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities for those who view military duty as incompatible with their beliefs, but military conscription offices often broadly ignore requests for such service.

After the war began, Tabalov said his group saw a large increase in inquiries about the alternative service law, which is vaguely phrased and allows military officials to easily turn down applications.

“We are worried that in the current militarist mood, military conscription offices can take a tougher attitude and reject appeals for the alternative civil service,” he said.

Reuters

In tears at border, Ukrainians say they held on until they had to flee

Joanna Plucinska and Anna Voitenko – April 1, 2022

SHEHYNI, Ukraine (Reuters) – Valery Petrovich Sorokin, 66, didn’t want to leave his home outside of Kharkiv. He suffers from arthritis and struggles to move. But, a month into the war, as Russian bombs fell around him, his family told him he had to go to Poland with them.

“There are planes all the time and the sound of bombing all the time, it’s very loud,” he told Reuters tearfully as his family huddled under green tents set up to protect refugees from the rain as they waited at the Shehyni border crossing in Ukraine.

“They did it, they did these horrible things. It’s hard to believe,” he said, choking on his words. “For what? For ambitions? The ambitions of the ‘ruler’?”

Sorokin is one of hundreds of Ukrainian refugees who were waiting in the rain to cross from Shehyni into Medyka, in Poland, on Thursday. Many had stayed in cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol in the east until they ran out of supplies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 on what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

More than 4 million Ukrainians have fled abroad since the start of the invasion, with the majority crossing into Poland, which had the region’s largest Ukrainian community of about 1 million before the war. So far, 2.4 million Ukrainians have entered Poland, according to the Polish border guard service.

RELENTLESS BOMBARDMENT

After failing to capture a single major Ukrainian city in five weeks of war, Russia says it has shifted its focus to the southeast, where it has backed separatists since 2014.

The area includes the port of Mariupol, scene of the war’s worst humanitarian emergency, where the United Nations believes thousands of people have died after more than a month under Russian siege and relentless bombardment.

Alena Kogemiakiva, 25, was carrying all her remaining possessions, including her two pet rats in small backpack.

“I was in Mariupol the whole time,” she said. “We just slowly watched how the number of our homes was getting smaller every day. Everyone I know, they don’t have a house right now.”

Tatiana Victorovna Dumskava, a schoolteacher, said she waited until March 22 to leave Mariupol. It was only when she and her husband had “two sips of water each” left that she realised she had no choice but to leave.

“My apartment was burning right in front of my face. We didn’t have any lights, any electricity, any gas, any water,” she told Reuters. “Our apartment block was destroyed by shelling. There was no balcony left.”

But she said that, despite the destruction, she hoped she’d be able to return home in some way.

“We want to go back very badly, to go back to Ukraine. We just want to be in a peaceful place for a few months and then go back home,” she said. “I can’t even imagine not going back there.”

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Anna Voitenko and Gerhard Mey; Editing by Alex Richardson)

The Hill

US to assist allies moving Soviet tanks to Ukraine: report

Lexi Lonas – April 1, 2022

The U.S. will help allies move Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine in an effort to assist the country in protecting its Donbas region amid the Russian invasion, The New York Times reported Friday.

A U.S. official, who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity, did not give provide a timeline on the tanks’ transfer, but noted that the movement will happen soon. The official also did not provide details on which countries the U.S. was assisting to move the military vehicles.

The transfer marks the first time in the conflict that the U.S. has assisted directly to transfer military resources to Ukraine and comes in direct response to a request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has asked the West to transfer weapons for weeks, the source told the Times.

In the past, U.S. officials, including President Biden, have been reluctant to declare a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine for fear that it would be forced to defend the airspace and spark direct conflict with Russia.

The Defense Department told The Hill the agency has no comment at this time.

The U.S. has indicated Russia is changing its focus on the eastern part of Ukraine in the Donbas region, where Moscow has been backing separatist fighting for years.

The Pentagon said Russia is sending 1,000 fighters to Donbas, and Zelensky has vowed to continue to defend the territory.

The official told the Times the tanks will give Ukraine the ability to conduct long-range artillery strikes against Russia.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Daily Beast

Russian Families Are Disowning Each Other Over Putin’s War

Anna Nemtsova – April 1, 2022

As a mixed-race man living in Moscow, life for 30-year-old film producer and actor Jean-Michel Shcherbak was not always easy. But through all of the hardships he has faced in his life, there was one person he always thought he could lean on: his 63-year-old mother, Marina, a linguistic scientist and staunch Orthodox Christian. She raised him alone as a single mom, taught him to be smart, to work hard, and to avoid conflicts. She always reassured him that he would never have to worry about his future—because she would always be there for him.

But his loving mother is also a passionate supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Back in 2018, she did not speak to her son for two weeks after he refused to vote for Putin in Russia’s presidential elections. Eventually, they reconciled. That is… until Shcherbak took a stand against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Shortly after the Russian army was deployed to Ukraine last month, Shcherbak wrote in a post on Instagram, that he felt “scared, hurt and ashamed” of the Russian offensive in an open letter to his many friends in Ukraine. His statement deeply damaged his relationship with his mother, who, after seeing the post, called him “a traitor” and cut all ties with him.

Marina, Scherbak says, is convinced that her son is a supporter of what she refers to as the “fascist powers” in Ukraine.

“My mother wrote to me that ‘there would be no traitors in her family,’ that she does not want to have anything to do with ‘a russophobe’ like me and that our life paths now led in different directions,” Shcherbak told The Daily Beast in a phone interview from Germany. He left Moscow in late February for a work trip, but has plans to eventually return to Russia. “I have no doubts that my mother loves me and that she wants to save me, to protect me. But she is convinced that somebody has brainwashed me.”

Hundreds of people expressed their support for Shcherbak when he shared his mother’s decision to denounce him as her son to his 25,000 Instagram followers. Many admitted they had experienced similar issues with their parents. “My mother is just the same,” actress Anastasia Lyovina wrote in a comment. “That is what our parents are like. To them only America is bad and VVP [Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin] is a saint,” another follower wrote. “Our mothers have been zombified by propaganda, I am not discussing anything with my mother,” read another comment.

There is a wide spectrum of political views in modern Russia, but according to a social study released by the independent Russian research organization Levada Center on Thursday, most Russians still disagree with the use of the word “war” to describe what is happening in Ukraine, choosing instead to believe that Putin’s so-called “special operation” is legitimate and justified.

Putin’s Soldiers Caught on Tape Lamenting Losses and Blasting His Army of ‘Stupid Morons’

“The majority of respondents support the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, naming ‘protection of the Russian-speaking population’ and ‘border security’ among the motives for their support,” read the report. “Those who are against explain their attitude by the fact that violence and death of people are unacceptable.”

Even the most loving and tight knit Russian families are having painful fights over the war in Ukraine. Anna Zekria, a 42-year-old photo curator, told The Daily Beast she has always had healthy discussions with her 74-year-old father about political issues in Russia in the past.

But this time around, things were drastically different. “My father has always respected my political views, I am not even sure what happened. It was a sudden change,” Zekriya told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “My father is trying to convince me and my brother that geopolitics are more complicated than we know, that ‘Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine,’ that ‘Nazis run Ukraine.’”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian and Russian public officials appear to have made some progress in peace talks for the first time since the war began on Feb. 24. Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky declared this week that Russia would “drastically reduce” and de-escalate its combat operations in some regions of Ukraine.

The war hawks of Russia have been raging over this most recent development. One of the Kremlin’s most prominent TV propagandists, Vladimir Solovyev, said that Medinsky’s words were “insane” and “demoralizing.” Putin’s faithful ally, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, called on Russian soldiers to “finish what we started” in Ukraine and “enter” the capital of Kyiv.

“The authorities have created a monster which is bigger than they expected and this monster hates the peace talks, so that the Kremlin’s bots have to calm this monster down,” Zekria said. “It is just scary to see how friends and family members demand to ‘cleanse’ Ukraine, win the war, otherwise all our soldiers have died for nothing, they say.”

Looking back at the events of the past month, Shcherbak said he felt “empty” about how his relationship with his mother fell apart. On Wednesday, he told The Daily Beast that he was struggling to understand Marina. How could a proud single mother—someone who had brought him up to be brave, to have a critical mind, and to always avoid violence—somehow support the atrocities being committed in Ukraine?

“My mother is deeply convinced that the West is eager to see Russia fall apart, just like the USSR—she misses Soviet times very much,” Shcherbak said. “I am sorry I did not have a chance to travel more around the world with my mother, that I did not have a chance to show her France before she told me: ‘You are not my son any longer.’”

Business Insider

Russia’s planting of land mines shows its troops know they’ve been defeated and don’t plan another big attempt on Kyiv

Abbie Shull – April 1, 2022

• Russian forces are using banned anti-personnel mines to cover its tactical retreat in Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said.
• The recent discovery of anti-personnel mines comes as Russia claims it is scaling back its assault near Kyiv.
• Experts say Russian troops’ use of anti-personnel mines as they withdraw from the region shows they don’t plan another big attempt on Kyiv

Russian forces are using banned anti-personnel mines to cover its tactical retreat in Ukraine, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

Russia’s use of these mines shows they know they’ve been defeated in the region and don’t plan another assault on Kyiv, according to an expert from the Institute for the Study of War.

“If you’re laying mines all over the place it does suggest that you don’t think you’re going to be back there any time soon,” Frederick Kagan, a military scholar from the Institute for the Study of War, told Insider.

According to Kagan, Ukrainian troops had already defeated the Russian offensive on Kyiv and begun their own counter-offensive to push Russian troops back. Kagan said Russia’s announcement that it would pull troops out of Ukraine’s capital was “cover” to gain political capital after having to concede to defeat in Kyiv.

On Monday, Ukrainian explosive ordnance disposal teams located anti-personnel mines in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the report from Human Rights Watch. The deadly POM-3 mines can injure people up to 50 feet away, according to Human Rights Watch. The mines — which the group said “indiscriminately kill and maim” — are not used by the Ukrainian military and have reportedly been rigged to self-destruct if not activated over a period of time.

Russia — and the US — did not agree to the 1997 international Mine Ban Treaty. Ukraine signed the treaty in 1999 and became a state party in 2005. They have used defensive mines for roadblocks in Kyiv.

Kagan told Insider photos have shown that the Russians are indiscriminately placing mines rather than digging in and deeply laying them.

“They’re laying mines to delay the Ukrainian offensive so they can pull their troops out,” Kagan said. “From what I’ve seen, they’re doing this so hastily I think the demining process will be much less complicated than in areas where deep minefields have been laid.”

Reuters

Ukraine says Russian forces pushed back around Kyiv but fighting rages

Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder – April 1, 2022

(Reuters) -Ukraine pushed back Russian forces around Kyiv on Friday, retaking control of some areas near the capital amid fierce battles, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia said during negotiations on Tuesday that it would scale down operations in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, both of which are in northern Ukraine, but officials in both regions say fighting has continued in some areas.

“Our troops are chasing them both to the northwest and northeast (of Kyiv), pushing the enemy away from Kyiv,” said Oleksiy Arestovych, a political adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

He said Russia was also carrying out a partial troop rotation and sending some of its forces to fight in eastern Ukraine.

Later, local officials said the northern Kyiv region towns of Bucha and Ivankiv had been retaken by Ukrainian forces and Ukraine’s armed forces said the nearby town of Borodyanka had also been liberated, sharing a photo of Ukrainian troops they said was taken in the town.

“March 31 will go down in the history of our town… as the day of its liberation from Russian (forces),” Bucha Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk said in a video which appeared to be filmed outside the town hall.

Reuters was unable to verify immediately the information about recaptured settlements, military movements or fighting in the region.

“RISK OF DYING IS HIGH”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said Russian forces are not withdrawing but regrouping, while Ukrainian officials say Russian troops are losing ground rather than retreating of their own accord.

But Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko urged residents not to head back to Kyiv yet because “huge” battles were being fought to the north and east of the capital. He did not indicate that these were new battles.

“The risk of dying is pretty high, and that’s why my advice to anyone who wants to come back is: Please, take a little bit more time,” he said.

The governor of Chernihiv region, where Russian has also pledged to pull back, said some Russian troops had withdrawn but some remained in his region.

“Air and missile strikes are (still) possible in the region, nobody is ruling this out,” Governor Viacheslav Chaus said in a video address.

Ukrainian officials also said the southern port city of Mariupol was still holding out after weeks of bombardment by Russian forces and that fighting continued in eastern Ukraine.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage and Alistair Bell)