Social media videos show the first phase of Russia’s partial mobilization underway in several Russian regions, especially in the Caucasus and the Russian Far East. Telegram videos showed a group of newly mobilized men awaiting transport, supposedly to Amginskiy Uliss in the Yakutiya region, a vast territory of Siberia — where the caption on one video read, “50 mobilized guys going to special operations zone.” Another shows a group of about 100 newly mobilized soldiers waiting at Magadan Airport in the Russian Far East, next to a transport aircraft. The group is instructed on no smoking and other rules inside the plane and is warned that it will be cold inside the plane and that there are no toilets on the plane. Still in the Russian Far East, in the town of Neryungri, a community video channel posted footage of families saying goodbye to a large group of men as they boarded buses. In the video, a woman can be seen crying and hugging her husband goodbye as he reaches out his daughter’s hand from the bus window. Neryungri is six time zones east of Ukraine. CNN was unable to independently locate or date all of the videos posted. The republic of Buryatia has already supplied hundreds of volunteers to the conflict in Ukraine. The Central Asian region may be poised to send many more. According to a community Telegram channel called The People of Baikal, “they may mobilize up to 6-7 thousand people in Buryatia. The authorities do not say the exact number.” “Buses of mobilized people arrive in Ulan-Ude [Buryatia’s capital] in the morning. The men are being taken to the gathering point of the Military Commissariat…”, he said. The channel, which has just under 5,000 subscribers, bills itself as independent. It quotes a local official as saying, “we were given a verbal order to lift the mobilized people from their beds, put them in cars and bring them immediately to the military registration and recruiting office.” Unable to verify channel reference. In Dagestan in the Caucasus, a furious argument broke out at a recruitment office, according to a video. One woman said her son had been fighting since February. Told by a man that he shouldn’t send him, she replied, “Your grandfather fought to live,” and the man replied, “Then it was war, now it’s politics.” Much closer to the Ukrainian border, a crowd gathered near the city of Belgorod to drive out a batch of newly mobilized men. As they get on a bus, a boy calls out, “Bye, Dad!” and starts to cry. Other moves are underway to increase the flow of troops. Russia’s Human Rights Council has proposed that immigrants from Central Asian countries who have held Russian citizenship for less than 10 years will be subject to mandatory military service in Russia for one year, according to Russian news agency TASS.
