As women hugged their husbands and young men boarded buses to leave for 15 days of training before potentially deploying to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, there were signs of growing public anger. More than 1,300 people were arrested in anti-mobilization protests in cities and towns across Russia on Wednesday and Thursday, in the biggest public protests since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed reports of booked flights and queues to leave Russia as “false”. “Information about a certain feverish situation at airports is greatly exaggerated,” Peskov insisted during his daily conference call with reporters on Thursday. But there were other signs of growing public backlash against Putin and his war, despite the Kremlin’s harsh crackdown on dissent. In the city of Tolyatti, a local recruitment office was set on fire, one of dozens of similar attacks across Russia in recent months. Russia’s far-right war hawks, meanwhile, had a different cause for anger: a prisoner swap that freed commanders from Ukraine’s controversial Azov regiment, long branded by Russia as “Nazi.” They were exchanged with dozens of prisoners held in Ukraine, including Viktor Medvedchuk, who is rumored to be Putin’s closest Ukrainian friend and leader of the country’s main pro-Kremlin political party. The dual backlash over the mobilization and prisoner exchange has seen Putin facing his most acute crisis since launching the all-out invasion of Ukraine. Not only is his country struggling with punitive economic sanctions imposed by the West, but his military has suffered dramatic setbacks, including an embarrassing retreat from the northeastern region of Kharkiv. As mobilization begins in Russia, sold-out flights, protests and arrests With his options dwindling, Putin has made increasingly risky decisions that could turn the Russian public against the war. In his national address on Wednesday, he voiced support for steps to annex four Ukrainian regions he does not fully control, which risks heavy fighting and further humiliation. Putin also used his speech to make a thinly veiled threat that Russia would use nuclear weapons. On Thursday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the country’s Security Council, made the threat clear. “Referendums will be held and the Donbas republics and other territories will be admitted to Russia,” Medvedev posted on Telegram, warning that Russia would be willing to use “strategic nuclear weapons” to “protect” those territories. In New York, where world leaders gather for the annual General Assembly, top American and Russian diplomats clashed during a heated meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken told the council that every member must “send a clear message that these reckless nuclear threats must stop immediately.” He also condemned the horrific torture and killings of Ukrainian civilians discovered after Russia’s withdrawal from the towns of Izyum and Bucha. “Where the Russian tide recedes, we discover the horrors left in its wake,” Blinken said. “We cannot, we will not allow President Putin to get away with it.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied the accusations and accused Ukrainian forces of killing civilians in the eastern Donbass region with “impunity”. Lavrov also said that countries sending weapons to Ukraine or training its forces “to exhaust and weaken Russia” were direct parties to the war. “Such a line means the direct involvement of Western countries in the Ukrainian conflict and makes them a party to it,” he said, leaving the room as soon as he finished his speech. But amid the escalating rhetoric, the secret prisoner swap deal announced Wednesday night, brokered by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, showed that some behind-the-scenes diplomacy was still possible. The deal was celebrated in Kyiv, where Azov commanders are widely regarded as heroes for their role in holding the line during the siege of Mariupol. The head of Ukraine’s general directorate of military intelligence, Kyryl Budanov, claimed that some of the released prisoners had been tortured. “There are people who were subjected to very severe torture and unfortunately the percentage of such people among whom we returned is quite large,” he said. In Russia, the deal was so toxic that the Kremlin distanced itself from the decision and the Defense Ministry would not confirm the details. Medvedchuk, the apparent centerpiece of the deal, was Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and has long played a Machiavellian role in Ukrainian politics. Before Moscow’s failure to seize Kyiv and topple Zelensky’s elected government, Medvedchuk was seen as a potential puppet leader for the Kremlin. But he is best known as a close friend of Putin. Medvedchuk said the Russian leader is his daughter’s godfather and Putin visited his palatial mansion in Crimea. Asked if Medvedchuk had been released, Peskov said: “I cannot comment on the exchange of prisoners. I don’t have the strength to do it.” A statement by the Russian Defense Ministry also did not mention Medvedchuk. Freed Russian prisoners arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on September 22 as part of a major prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. (Video: Reuters, Photo: AP/Reuters) Finally, Denis Pushilin, Moscow’s proxy leader in a separatist region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, confirmed that he had agreed to the exchange of 50 Russian servicemen, five pro-Russian fighters from Ukraine and Medvedchuk. Sending Russian men to fight in a war to “de-zoom” Ukraine at the same time as freeing Azov’s commanders and fighters was difficult for Russia to explain — given that, for years, Kremlin propaganda featured its group Azov as fanatical terrorists and “Nazi” leaders who must be destroyed. The swap deal was made “under difficult conditions,” Pushilin told Russian state television. “We gave them 215 people, including nationalist fighting battalions. They are war criminals. We were very aware of that, but our goal was to get our children back as soon as possible.” Hard-line nationalists branded the exchange a betrayal that undermined the cause of the war, on the same day Russia was calling up men to fight. Among the harshest critics of Russia’s military approach – because it is too soft – is Igor Girkin, a former agent of Russia’s FSB who commanded Moscow’s proxy fighters in 2014. He called the exchange of Azov fighters “treason”, in a post on social media Thursday, accusing “as yet unknown persons from the top leadership of the Russian Federation.” Liberation was “worse than a crime and worse than a mistake. This is FREAKING STUPID,” he complained. (Ghirkin is being tried in absentia by a court in The Hague for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.) In Chechnya, regional dictator and close Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov told Telegram that the “terrorists” of the Azov Regiment should not have surrendered. “It’s not right. Our fighters crushed the fascists in Mariupol, drove them to Azovstal, smoked them from underground, died, wounded and shell-shocked. The transportation of even one of these Azov terrorists should have been unacceptable” . Putin has relied on public apathy to continue his war and has not announced a comprehensive national plan. But his mobilization, which is supposed to call up at least 300,000 reservists, will force many more Russians to face the brutal reality of the conflict in Ukraine. Putin calls up up to 300,000 reservists, backs annexation amid war losses Some protesters arrested while demonstrating against the mobilization on Wednesday were given military summonses at police stations, a move intended to prevent further dissent, especially by men of fighting age. Peskov said it was perfectly legal. “It is not against the law. Therefore, there is no violation of the law,” he said. Questions about the partial mobilization swirled Thursday, with confusion over who would be spared being called up and who would be forced to fight. The role of Peskov’s son, Nikolai Peskov, underscored Russian suspicions that wealthy and politically connected figures would be spared military service and that the war would continue to be fought largely by men from poor regions far from Moscow. Nikolai Peskov was not thrilled with the idea that he might be sent to fight when he got a call on Wednesday from Dmitry Nizhovtsev, a member of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s team and host of an opposition YouTube channel. Nizovchev, posing as a military official, demanded that the younger Peskov appear at a local military commissariat the next day at 10 a.m. “Obviously I won’t come tomorrow at 10 o’clock,” said Nikolai Peskov. “You must understand that I am Mr. Peskov and it is not proper for me to be there. In short, I will solve it on another level.” Natalia Abbakamova in Riga, Latvia and David Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The last: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in an address to the nation on September 21, describing the move as an effort to defend Russian sovereignty against a West that seeks to use Ukraine as a tool to “divide and destroy Russia. .” Follow our live updates here. The battle: A successful Ukrainian…
