Social media videos show the first phase of Russia’s partial mobilization underway in several Russian regions, particularly in the Caucasus and Russian Far East.
Telegram videos showed a newly mobilized group of men allegedly awaiting transport at Amginskiy Uliss in the Yakutiya region, a vast Siberian territory – where the caption of one video read: “50 mobilized men go to the special operations zone.”
Another shows a group of about 100 newly mobilized soldiers waiting next to a transport plane at Magadan Airport in Russia’s Far East. The group will be given instructions on no smoking and other rules on the plane and will be warned that it will be cold on the plane and that there are no toilets on board.
Still in Far East Russia, in the city of Neryungri, a community video channel released video of families saying goodbye to a large group of men as they board buses. The video shows a crying woman hugging her husband goodbye as he reaches out of the bus window for his daughter’s hand.
Neryungri is six time zones east of Ukraine.
CNN was not able to independently geolocate or date all of the videos posted.
The Republic of Buryatia has already provided hundreds of volunteers to the conflict in Ukraine. The Central Asian region may be sending many more. According to a Community Telegram channel called The People of Baikal, “They could mobilize up to 6,000 to 7,000 people in Buryatia. The authorities do not give the exact number.”
“Buses with mobilized people arrive in Ulan-Ude [Buryatia’s capital] in the morning. The men will be taken to the assembly point of the military commissariat…” it said.
The broadcaster, with almost 5,000 subscribers, describes itself as independent. It quotes a local official as saying, “We received verbal orders to lift the mobilized from their beds, put them in cars and take them immediately to the Military Registration and Enlistment Office.”
It is not possible to check the channel’s reports.
According to a video, a violent argument broke out at a recruitment office in Dagestan in the Caucasus. One woman said her son had been fighting since February. Told by a man that she shouldn’t have sent him, she replied, “Your grandfather fought so you could live,” to which the man replied, “It was war then, now it’s politics.”
Much closer to the Ukrainian border, a crowd gathered near the town of Belgorod to bid farewell to a group of newly mobilized men. As they get on a bus, a boy yells, “Bye, daddy!” and starts to cry.
Other steps are underway to increase troop flow.
The Human Rights Council of Russia has proposed that immigrants from Central Asian countries who have held Russian citizenship for less than 10 years be conscripted into military service in Russia for one year, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
