Several videos posted on social media on Thursday and Friday show a partial mobilization in Russia: drunken men fighting, priests blessing recruits and a researcher worried about ethnic cleansing in some regions.

The series of recordings was distributed by Belarusian journalist Tadeusz Gicha, who is also a researcher at the Center for European Political Analysis, a non-profit institute that studies Central and Eastern Europe.

He wryly notes that in the Russian Far East, the first losses among the mobilized are already being reported. “We haven’t made it yet, and the man has already had a stroke,” says the person filming the scene.

“Meanwhile, another group of mobilized Russians only got drunk for a few hours. “What are we going for? where we are going, does Hiba know him!”, Gitsa quotes the words of one of the Russians on the recording.

On another frame, taken in the city of Yuzhno-Kurylsk, Sakhalin Oblast, it can be seen that some of the mobilized people got into a fight while drinking alcohol.

However, let us recall that, despite these records, the first video footage of the mobilization in Russia recorded dramatic moments when men with tears in their eyes said goodbye to their wives and children.

After drunken men, priests with holy water at a mobilization in Russia

In a separate video released by BBC journalist Francis Scarr, a priest can be seen blessing new recruits by sprinkling them with holy water in the western Russian city of Lipetsk. Interestingly, this record shows that this time the Ministry of Defense in Moscow appears to have extended its recruiting efforts to Western Russia as well.

Patriarch Kirill of Russia said in a message after the mobilization was issued on Wednesday that Russians going to war should not be considered enemies.

“We know what danger looms over the Ukrainian people, which they (Westerners) are trying to transform, to tear from the one holy body of Russians into a state hostile to Russians themselves, hostile to Russia,” the leader said. of the Russian Orthodox Church

At the same time, he added that “it is important that our hearts do not have the feeling that there is an enemy in Ukraine.”

Another entry shared by Scarr presents the case of a 63-year-old man who says he was mobilized in the Volgograd region despite suffering from diabetes. Lt. Col. Oleksandr Yermolaev claims that he also suffers from cerebral ischemia and that a military doctor declared him fit for military service, although no examinations were performed on him.

The case of an IT specialist from Moscow, who was also mobilized under dubious conditions, made the rounds on Russian social networks, and the military leadership eventually decided to postpone his conscription.

• On the same topic: VIDEO Rare footage from a Russian recruiter: “Done! You are all soldiers now! Why do you howl like women?”

Suspicions of ethnic cleansing in the Russian Far East

In a video released by Wilson Center researcher Kamil Galeyev, a long line of men can be seen waiting to board a plane, noting that the mobilization ordered by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday appears asymmetric: total in some isolated regions, especially where there are ethnic minorities, and partly in large cities, especially Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Galeyev, a journalist who was born in Russia but now lives in the United States, says that while concrete data is still lacking, the method of partial mobilization may have elements of “ethnic cleansing.”

A Wilson Center researcher previously spoke about this, suggesting that one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin is not concerned about the large losses of the Sponges, Dagestanis, Tuvans and other minorities is that the high number of dead among them allows changing the ethnic structure. of Russia

Haleev now cites unofficial data indicating that the list of regions where they would be subject to total mobilization includes Buryatia, Sakhalin, Magadan and other regions with significant numbers of ethnic minorities.

“In other words, the mobilization seems likely to disproportionately affect the Russian Far East,” he says.

In a speech on Wednesday just after Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that 300,000 reservists would be enlisted initially, saying they would be used to protect Russia’s borders and not for “special military operation”. in Ukraine.

However, Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a source in the presidential administration in Moscow, that a secret clause in the mobilization decree actually calls for the incorporation of a million people.

A source in the Kremlin said on condition of anonymity that at first it was believed that the entire decree would be secret, this position was supported by representatives of the Ministry of Defense, but in the end they decided to hide only the paragraph that refers to the actual number of those who are going to be mobilized.

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