In Moscow, Mikhail Suetin was expected to be detained at a demonstration against sending thousands of reservists to Ukraine. However, he did not foresee that he would be given a mobilization order to go to the front.

At least 23 people died in Vinnitsa in eastern Ukraine. Photo: Sergey Supinsky/AFP/ND

A few hours after Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday (21) the mobilization of 300,000 men and women, Mikhail, a 29-year-old musician, went out to protest on the Arbat.

Like 1,300 other people across the country, he was detained.

“I was expecting the usual procedures: jail, police station, court,” says a young man who spoke to AFP on Thursday (22).

“But to tell me: “Tomorrow you will go to war”, (…) it was a surprise,” says the musician.

According to an independent specialist from the NGO OVD-Info, Suetin is not the only protester who received an order to mobilize at the police station after being detained.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters there was nothing “illegal” about it.

Suetin says that after the arrest, the police took him to a room where they wanted him to sign a subpoena and go to the military mobilization center.

However, according to unconfirmed reports, this young female protester was killed by Russian police in Moscow during anti-mobilization protests. pic.twitter.com/K0bumWQBXm

— Sergey Sumlenny (@sumlenny) September 21, 2022

“Either sign this or spend ten years in prison,” the opponent of the Russian attack on Ukraine, launched on February 24, specified the threat.

Last Tuesday (20), on the eve of the mobilization, Parliament voted for harsh prison terms for deserters and for those who refuse to join the army.

However, the text has not yet entered into force.

Suetin refused to sign the summons on the advice of his lawyer and was released on Thursday morning (22).

However, the officers warned that Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee, which is in charge of the most important criminal investigations, would be informed of the refusal, which would bring him “big problems”.

– “Unfortunately, I signed” –

Andrei, who turned 19 last week, also attended demonstrations in Moscow on Wednesday. He was arrested and received the same mobilization summons.

A Russian boy screams “farewell, father” and gouges out his eyes as his father is driven to fight in Ukraine after Putin’s mobilization speech.

The Russian people will see how tens or even hundreds of thousands of their sons, fathers, brothers will die ????????

Still they won’t end the war pic.twitter.com/A4r7lRClXr

— Visegradskaya 24 (@visegrad24) September 22, 2022

Unlike Suetin, the teenager signed the document under “threat”, a digital copy of which the AFP agency had access to.

“It is clear that I could not escape. I looked around and decided I couldn’t resist,” he told AFP by phone. “Unfortunately, I signed,” says the teenager.

Andrei has just started his studies at the university. Despite assurances from the Kremlin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that no students would be drafted and that the Russian armed forces would favor reservists with special skills or military experience, the young man was nevertheless summoned to court.

Growing protests against military mobilization in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg and many other Russian cities tonight.

Russians prefer to watch the war on TV. Getting HIMARS personally in Kherson is not at all tempting. pic.twitter.com/nmHbUad6wk

— Visegradskaya 24 (@visegrad24) September 21, 2022

“But, as they say here, Russia is a country where the expansion of the possible is endless,” he notes bitterly.

Andrei, who is still looking for a lawyer, ultimately decided not to go to the mobilization point at the appointed time, Thursday at 10:00, despite not knowing what the consequences would be.

“I didn’t tell my parents because they would be worried,” he explains. “I will tell you when I have a clearer idea of ​​what will happen to me,” the boy adds.

Ukraine’s occupied regions vote to join Russia and G7 warns they won’t recognize result

Officials loyal to Moscow in the occupied regions of Ukraine launched on Friday (23) annexation referendums with Russia, criticized by G7 leaders who promised “never” to recognize them.

The referendums, labeled a “farce” by Ukraine and the West, represent a new escalation in the conflict that began on February 24.

“We will never recognize these referendums, which seem like a step towards annexation, and we will never recognize this alleged annexation if it happens,” said the leaders of the G7 (which includes the US, Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Japan).

Meanwhile, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine assured this Friday, after visiting 27 cities and questioning more than 150 victims of violence, that “war crimes have been committed” in the country.

On the same day, the exhumation of 447 bodies from a mass grave in Izyum, a city in the northeast recaptured from the Russians, revealed “traces of torture,” including the “amputation of the genitals” of at least 30 corpses.

But international and Kyiv criticism did not prevent Moscow from holding a referendum in Ukraine.

Voting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions (east), as well as in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions (south) began at 5:00 Moscow time (2:00 Moscow time), Russian news agencies report.

– China Reviews –

The five-day referendums add tension to a week marked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mobilization of 300,000 reservists, who also threatened to use a nuclear arsenal to defend his country’s territory.

Hundreds of polling stations were expected to open in four territories, as well as others in Russia, so that IDPs could also vote.

“We hope that after the referendum they will stop bombing us and we will have peace and order,” Volodymyr Shutov from the Luhansk region, who went to vote for Donetsk’s representative office in Moscow, told AFP.

In Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities, the authorities organized demonstrations in support of the referendum with flags and posters.

“These referendums are a step towards peace,” said Viktor Suvorov, 40, who attended the demonstration in Moscow.

But Russia seems isolated in its goal.

China, its closest ally since the start of the war, has been veiled in its criticism of Moscow, assuring that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected.”

In addition, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met this Friday in New York with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba.

– Military successes of Ukraine –

The referendums are reminiscent of consultations organized in 2014 on the Crimean peninsula, annexed to Russia after a vote deemed rigged by Western powers.

The hypothetical integration of the four regions with Russia, which analysts consider to be something definite, would mean that Moscow, following its doctrine, could use its atomic weapons to protect them from a counteroffensive initiated by Ukraine in the east and south of the country.

Putin said he would defend Russia’s territory “by all means possible”, while former president and current second member of the country’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev pointed out that this could be due to the use of “strategic nuclear weapons”.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces recaptured most of Kharkiv Oblast (northeast). This counter-offensive allowed Kyiv to recapture hundreds of cities and towns that had been under Russian control for several months.

On Friday, the Ukrainian army announced the liberation of the eastern city of Yatskovka in Donetsk. It also exposed an advance south of Baymouth (east), which the Russians had been unsuccessfully trying to capture for several months.

One person was killed in a Russian Iranian drone strike in Odessa, a major Black Sea port, according to local authorities.

A spokesman for President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Tehran’s support for Moscow, whose arms sales “go against the territorial integrity” of Ukraine.

– Mandatory call –

Moscow began mandatory conscription on Thursday after Putin announced mobilization of 300,000 reservists to support the war effort.

The Russian army said at least 10,000 volunteered for the fight within 24 hours of Putin’s announcement.

But many men also flee Russia before being called up for military service, especially to the former Soviet republics, where visa-free entry is allowed.

Finland has decided to take action to “significantly” restrict the entry of Russian citizens into its territory, while the Baltic states and Poland have been blocking entry for weeks.