There’s nothing ‘partial’ about it. Inside Russia’s mobilisation
BBC tells the stories of men who had been drafted to fight in Russia's war in Ukraine despite being exempt from the military service.
By Sergey Goryashko, Liza Fokht, Anastasia Stogney and Ilya Barabanov
Across Russia, people are receiving call-up papers, in person or at the workplace, and ordered to go to recruitment centres, before being sent off on planes, trains and buses.
Papers have been handed to people without military experience, to those who never served in the army, to people older than 60, and to fathers with many children – all of whom are supposed to be exempt from military service.
On the afternoon of 21st September, Alexander Dorzhiev, who works at the Department of Civil Defence and Emergency Situations in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia, was asked to ‘pop in’ to work. No explanation was offered.
Alexander was at home on sick leave and explained that he would not be able to come. At 11pm his boss called him.
“Where are you right now? You’re going to get call-up papers from a girl called Anastasia, from the sport ministry.”
This is how Alexander’s wife, Yanina Nimaeva, a journalist at the local television channel, recounts the call. “He also wanted to know how many children we have”.
38-year-old Alexander has five children in total: three from his first marriage and twins from his second. Legally, he should not be subject to mobilisation. People who have four or more children under the age of 16 are not supposed to be called up.
‘Anastasia from the sport ministry’ called almost immediately and requested Alexander to await her arrival. She said that she needed to urgently hand him enlistment papers because by 4am the next morning he would need to be on the other side of the city at a cultural events centre where draftees would be gathered. From there, men who had been mobilised were to travel to the Chita region by train at 2pm on the 22nd of September.
“The next time she called we didn’t pick up”, Yanina said. “We didn’t know what to do, we just weren’t expecting this sort of surprise”.
Two months prior, Alexander had already received call-up papers. They make it mandatory for a person ‘upon the announcement of mobilisation’ to promptly present themselves at a specific meeting point and specific time without awaiting any further instructions.
This document – written on a pink slip of paper – is pasted at the army commission into the military ID of some people liable for military service. But Alexander never served in the army, and he doesn’t have a military ID at all.
Yanina explained that her husband’s boss was instructed as early as the summer to provide ‘10 people from the organisation to send to Ukraine’.
“He was summoned three times by the boss, who tried to convince him by saying ‘you are younger than all of us, we are old: you must go and pay your debts to the motherland’”.
Alexander refused. “They called him from the accounting department and invited him to verify his details. He came, and someone from HR suddenly handed him draft papers”.
Alexander tore them up as soon as he received them. The department was unable to recruit ten men for the war – mobilisation orders were instead given to two other employees.
After mobilisation was announced, Alexander was nonetheless sent draft papers. The authorities were not able to deliver them in person as Alexander and his family do not currently live at their registered address. However, people from the draft board did come to look for him in the apartment where he is registered.
This apartment is currently being renovated, according to Yanina. The workers showed the officials that there were no men in it.
Yanina Nimaeva recorded a video in which she tells the story about how they attempted to mobilise her husband and father of her children. She said that she got a lot of support and that the video was widely-shared. The head of department at Alexander’s work called her and asked for the video to be taken down.
“Allegedly they had made a mistake, they hadn’t understood that he wasn’t supposed to have been drafted”, says Yanina.
Yanina and Alexander currently do not intend to leave the country. “We will try to resolve the issue through legal means. To prove that it was, in fact, a genuine mistake”, says Yanina.
But her husband also has no plans to go to the draft office. “There is no guarantee that they will release him once he is there. Judging by how everyone is getting draft papers in Buryatia, they are calling up people who have no previous military experience”.
60-year-old army recruits
Late on the evening of the 22nd of September, head of the Republic of Buryatia Aleksei Tsydenov declared that “those with many children, four or more, will not be subject to mobilisation”.
“Yesterday and today summons were handed to such people”, wrote Tsydenov on his VKontakte page, “but later, after their particulars were clarified, they were allowed to go home. Since this morning, 70 such people, who had been called up, were released and allowed to go home, both from the recruitment centres, and those people already within military units”.
He suggested such people “simply inform the draft office representative at the meeting point and provide supporting documents”.
Tsydenov also wrote that “the partial mobilisation does not in any way apply to those who, for whatever reason, have not served in the army”. In orders regarding mobilisation in other regions however, this fact is not mentioned.
These orders, signed by regional military commissars, first appeared on Wednesday evening. Currently, orders from the commissars of Tatarstan, Dagestan, Yakutia, Samara, Voronezh and Kursk regions have been published in the media and in Telegram channels.
All of them are practically the same - everyone who received papers must appear at the recruiting stations. If a person has a ‘call-up order’ (the kind written on pink paper) on their military ID, then they must come to the military registration and enlistment office without waiting for a summons and within the time specified in the order - usually a few hours after the announcement of mobilisation. In addition, anyone with military ID is prohibited from leaving the district or city where they are registered during the time of mobilisation.
The mobilisation order for Moscow, published on Thursday evening, differs in some details. It only says that those who have received ‘personal summons from the military commissariat’ should present themselves at the recruiting stations. These orders, much like the presidential decree on mobilisation, do not specify who exactly who will be called up, what the age limit is, what military specialisations are required, or whether combat experience is mandatory.
Clarifications from the Ministry of Defence appeared only on Thursday evening. Rear Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky, a representative of the Main Organizational and Mobilisation Directorate of the General Staff, said that "the relevant categories of citizens that are needed to perform the necessary tasks will be called up and, as such, there is no established order for mobilisation among those in the reserve." As priorities, he named such specialisations as tank-drivers, infantry, gunners, drivers, and driver-mechanics.
The number of conscripts, according to him, is determined by the regular needs of the military units in question. "During the first days of the partial mobilisation, about 10,000 citizens arrived at the enlistment centres voluntarily, without waiting to be drafted," Tsimlyansky said.
Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu has said that 300,000 people with combat experience would be mobilised. Tsimlyansky did not specify a number.
“Citizens who hold the rank of officer and those that hold the ranks of private and sergeant will be called up,” the rear admiral said. “There are also of course positions that can be filled by women with the appropriate military specialisations. These include, for example, medical workers. But the need for such specialists is minimal.”
Age restrictions differ between rank: reserve privates and sergeants will be drafted at up to 35 years of age, junior officers up to 50, and senior officers up to 55.
The head of the human-rights group "Agora", Pavel Chikov, said in his Telegram channel that he knows of cases where even older people have been recruited. In Moscow, a 63-year-old colonel received a summons; in Samara a 60-year-old reserve sergeant; and in Volgograd a 55-year-old senior lieutenant.
"Papa, goodbye! Come back, Papa!"
On Thursday, a video appeared on social media in which men summoned to draft centres were given instructions from military commissars.
“Never ignore instructions, learn to bandage yourselves, an instructor will give you lessons on first aid. People die from basic blood loss, all because someone doesn’t know how to apply bandages. This is a serious matter. Guys, you are going to war, to war after some preparation. Therefore, accept this fact calmly, and don’t tell me ‘Well I guess I’ll bleed out here or there.’ We are all observing our national traditions”.
This is how an employee at the enlistment office in Buryatia explained the importance of first aid.
“I’ll now read out surnames. You will all go into the bus and then no one is to leave the bus”.
Judging by the video, the mobilised men were driven from the enlistment office to the regional capital Ulan-Ude, and from there by military plane to the Chita region. He also took time to remind the gathered men about the criminal charges they would face if they were to desert.
Desertion, according to Article 338 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, is considered to be the ‘deliberate non-appearance of a serviceman in a unit, or its purposeful abandonment, in order to evade service’. On September 20th, on the eve of Putin's speech, the State Duma hurriedly made significant additions to the Criminal Code regarding ‘periods of mobilisation or armed conflict’ (which will become an aggravating circumstance for any crime), including the article on desertion. Desertion will now be punishable by imprisonment for a term of five to 15 years.
Hefty prison terms have also appeared in the Russian criminal code for disobeying orders, refusing to participate in hostilities, resignation, and evading service. The amendments also introduce new articles on surrender and looting. They were adopted without debate in three readings, approved by the Federation Council on September 21, and sent to Putin for approval.
"Papa, goodbye! Come back, Papa!" - on a video from Stary Oskol, a child can be heard crying. In the footage, mobilised men boarded a regular bus as their relatives saw them off. From the enlistment office in Novomoskovsk in the Tula region, men were driven off to the applause of their loved ones. One of the buses had a sticker which read ‘For Mobilisation, the Motherland and Putin’s Victory.”
Over the past two days, the BBC has heard from residents of various regions in Russia who told of letters from military recruitment centres received by their employers. In these documents, the military required them to compile lists of workers for military training.
Judging by the dates on these documents, they were sent before Putin announced the ‘partial mobilisation’. His decree is not mentioned at all in the four letters seen by the BBC.
For example, one of the machine-building factories near Moscow received a letter from the local military commissar, which referred to Putin's decree of February 18 on the call-up of reservists for military training.
This document was signed even before the invasion of Ukraine. Two of its details are obscured by a label stating, ‘For official use’. They may have indicated exactly how many Russian citizens they planned to send to military training camps in 2022.
A copy of this letter was show to the BBC by Vladimir, an employee of the factory. The document instructs the factory to gather 20 men ‘up to the age of 45, healthy and fit for military service’. The selected employees should then be divided into groups of five and sent to military training camps, which would be held in four stages - from September 26 to November 26. The duration of the training would be 15 days.
“My colleagues are starting to panic, they wonder who will be sent away. Two have decided not to risk going into the office tomorrow. They fear that at work they will be handed draft papers or call-up documents”, Vladimir told us. He himself does not work in the same division of the factory that received the letter, so is not as worried as his colleagues.
A BBC correspondent, under the guise of the director of a made-up company that had received similar instructions, called the military commissariat which had sent the letter. We have a recording of the conversation, in which the commissar confirms his name and surname. He provides detailed answers to the correspondent’s questions about the requirement to send employees to military training.
"For military training? You must provide us with information about the employees who are in the reserve, in the prescribed manner: age, rank, military service, home address, telephone number, marital status. But it isn’t necessary to send anyone", he explained.
Regarding the ‘two-week training camps’ the military commissar replied: "The camps have been cancelled - can-celled you hear? Just provide the information and we will select people from it for the special operation".
The military committee was not able to provide an answer as to when the employees would go to the ‘special military operation’. "We are currently considering which people might be fit for purpose. After that, they will go."
Read the full story in Russian here.
Translated by Danny Booth.