Opponents of Vladimir V. Putin’s call that could bring 300,000 civilians into military service continued to show their disapproval across Russia on Saturday, with at least 745 people arrested, according to rights watchdog OVD-Info. of the man who monitors the activity of the police.
Members of the Vesna, or Spring, movement who called for demonstrations on Saturday under the slogan “No mobilization in the grave”, were raided in Saint Petersburg, as were several activists and journalists working for independent media. Such protests are effectively criminalized in Russia, and videos on social media show riot police beating protesters in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities like Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Tomsk, Chita, Khabarovsk and Saratov.
In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, riot police moved in on a group of protesters who held hands in a circle and sang an anti-war song popularized in the 1960s titled “May There Always Be Sunshine”. About 70 people were arrested there. In Tomsk, a man stopped traffic shouting “A peaceful life for our children” and “Don’t watch TV”, a reference to the flow of propaganda on state networks. He was arrested within minutes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly encouraged the protesters, speaking in Russian during his nightly address on Saturday. “Russian commanders don’t care about the lives of Russians – they just need to replenish the empty spaces left by the dead, the wounded, those who fled or the Russian soldiers who were captured,” he said. said, adding: “The key moment has come for you: At this moment it is decided whether your life is going to end or not.
Conscription fears grew after independent news outlets including Meduza and Novaya Gazeta reported that sources close to the Kremlin told them the administration planned to mobilize up to 1.2 million people.
Thousands more have fled since then, and many flights to destinations where Russians are not required to have visas have sold out. The border crossings with Finland and Georgia are jammed with cars.
Russians gather to protest despite a warning from the attorney general’s office, issued on Wednesday, that unauthorized protests could result in a sentence of up to 15 years in prison for ‘spreading false information’ about the military, which became a criminal offense in March.
Despite the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent, people took to the streets in protest. More than 1,300 protesters were arrested on Wednesday, according to OVD-Info, while several demonstrations were reported on Thursday, including in Dagestan, an impoverished region in the south where anti-draft protesters blocked a federal highway.
Russian authorities have discovered a new way of trying to quell the protests: by handing out draft summonses to detained male protesters. Several protesters apprehended on Wednesday told The New York Times that they received notices while in custody.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state broadcaster RT, wrote on Twitter that at least 200 summonses have been issued in this way so far, with more in the pipeline. Referring to a Russian town bordering Ukraine, she wrote: “Better them than Pskov’s teacher of the year, if you ask me.