A day after President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster his troops in Ukraine, dramatic scenes of tearful families saying goodbye to men leaving military mobilization centers in Russia emerged on social media. Video on Twitter from the eastern Siberian city of Neryungri shows men walking out of a stadium. Before boarding the buses, the men hugged family members waiting outside, many crying and some covering their mouths with their hands in grief. A man held a child to the window of a bus for one last look. In Moscow, women hugged, cried and made the sign of the cross to men at another rally. A 25-year-old man who gave only his first name, Dmitri, was hugged by his father, who told him “Be careful”, as they parted. Dmitry told the Russian media company Ostorozhno Novosti that he did not expect to be called and sent so quickly, especially since he is still a student. “Nobody said anything to me in the morning. They gave me the draft notice that I had to come here at 3 in the afternoon. We waited for 1.5 hours, then the recruiter came and said we are leaving now,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh great!’ I went outside and started calling my parents, my brother, all my friends to say that I was taken.” Western leaders derided Putin’s order as an act of weakness and desperation. More than 1,300 Russians were arrested in anti-war protests on Wednesday after he issued it, according to the independent Russian human rights group OVD-Info. Organizers said more protests were planned for Saturday. Putin’s partial call was short on details, so much so that the Russian military announced Thursday it had set up a call center to answer questions. Concerns about a potentially wider scheme have led some Russians to try to buy plane tickets to leave the country. German Interior Minister Nancy Fesser offered concrete support to potential defectors. He told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that anyone who “courageously opposes Putin’s regime and therefore puts himself in greater danger” can apply for asylum in Germany. In the Kremlin’s campaign to annex territory, pro-Moscow authorities in four Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine are planning voter referendums starting Friday to become part of Russia — a move that could extend the war and follow his book of the Kremlin since it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea following a similar referendum. Most of the world considers the 2014 annexation of Crimea illegal. Voting for the referendums in Ukraine’s Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions is scheduled to last until Tuesday. Foreign leaders called the votes illegal and non-binding. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a “fraud” and “noise” to distract the public. In Luhansk, billboards reading “With Russia Forever” and “Our Choice-Russia” appeared on the streets, while volunteers handed out ribbons in the colors of the Russian national flag and posters reading: “Russia is the future. Take part in the referendum!”. On the battlefield, Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanged missile and artillery barrages as both sides refused to concede ground despite recent military setbacks for Moscow and the reckoning over the invasion of the country after nearly seven months of war. Russian missile attacks on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia have left one dead and five injured, Ukrainian officials said. Officials in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk said Ukrainian shelling killed at least six people. Kirill Tymoshenko, a deputy in the Ukrainian president’s office, said a hotel in Zaporizhia had been hit and rescuers were trying to free people trapped in the rubble. The governor of the mainly Russian-held Zaporizhzhia region, Oleksandr Starukh, said Russian forces had targeted infrastructure and destroyed apartment buildings in the city, which remains in Ukrainian hands. The mayor of the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, Alexei Kulemzin, said Ukrainian shelling hit a covered market and a minibus. Overnight, one person was killed during Russian shelling in Nikopol, across the river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, according to the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor. While hostilities continued, the two sides managed to agree to a major prisoner exchange. Ukrainian officials announced the exchange of 215 Ukrainian and foreign fighters — 200 of them for one man, a Putin ally. Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, confirmed that pro-Russian Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk was part of the exchange. Putin has repeatedly spoken of Medvedchuk as a victim of political repression. Media reports claimed that before the Russian invasion, Medvedchuk was a leading candidate to lead a puppet government that the Kremlin hoped to install in Ukraine. Among the freed fighters were Ukrainian defenders of a steel factory in Mariupol during a long Russian siege, along with 10 foreigners, including five British citizens and two US military veterans, who had fought with Ukrainian forces. Some of those freed had faced death sentences in Russian-held areas. A video on the BBC news website on Thursday showed two of the released Britons, Aiden Ashlin and Sean Pinner, talking on a plane on their way home. “We just want to let everyone know that we are now out of the danger zone and coming home to our families,” Ashlyn said in the video, as Pinner added: “By the skin of our teeth.” The non-profit Presidium Network, which is helping with aid in Kyiv, said Ashlyn, Pinner and three other Britons were safely at home and reunited with their families on Thursday. The continuation of Russian missile attacks and the start of a partial mobilization of Russians in the armed forces suggest that the Kremlin is seeking to dispel any notion of weakness or waning determination to achieve its wartime goals in light of recent battlefield losses and other setbacks that undermine the aura. of Russian military power. Escalating tensions, a senior Kremlin official on Thursday repeated Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons if Russian soil is attacked. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said on his messaging app that strategic nuclear weapons are one of the options for securing Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. The remark appeared to serve as a warning that Moscow could also target Ukraine’s Western allies. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken responded on Thursday, calling on every member of the UN Security Council to “send a clear message” to Russia that it must stop its nuclear threats in the war in Ukraine. Russia’s neighbors have been concerned about a possible threat from Russia. Estonia said training exercises began Thursday for nearly 2,900 reservists and volunteers, in apparent contrast to Moscow’s announcement of a partial military mobilization.
Andrew Katell contributed from New York. Follow AP’s coverage of the war at
