CNN — More than 1,300 people were detained across Russia on Wednesday for participating in nationwide anti-war protests – with some directly conscripted into the military, according to a monitoring group, after leader Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of citizens for his faltering invasion of Ukraine.
Images and videos show police cracking down on demonstrators in multiple cities, with footage showing several protesters at a demonstration in central Moscow being carried away by the police and authorities in St. Petersburg attempting to contain a crowd chanting “no mobilization” outside Isakiivskiy Cathedral.
Police detained the protesters across 38 cities in Russia on Wednesday, according to figures released shortly after midnight by independent monitoring group OVD-Info. The group’s spokeswoman Maria Kuznetsova told CNN by phone that at at least four police stations in Moscow, some of the protesters arrested by riot police were being drafted directly into Russia’s military.
-------------------------------- We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb
Bazootiehead-in-training
Posts: 37953 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
Russia escalated its military and political campaign Thursday to capture Ukrainian territory, rounding up Russian army reservists to fight, preparing votes on annexing occupied areas and launching new deadly attacks.
A day after President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster his troops in Ukraine, dramatic scenes of tearful families bidding farewell to men departing from military mobilization centers in Russia appeared on social media.
Video on Twitter from the eastern Siberian city of Neryungri showed men emerging from a stadium. Before boarding 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 up to the window of one bus for a last look.
In Moscow, women hugged, cried and made the sign of the cross on men at another mobilization point. A 25-year-old who gave only his first name, Dmitry, received a hug from his father, who told him “Be careful,” as they parted.
Dmitry told Russian media company Ostorozhno Novosti he did not expect to be called up and shipped out so quickly, especially since he still is a student.
“No one told me anything in the morning. They gave me the draft notice that I should come here at 3 p.m. We waited 1.5 hours, then the enlistment officer came and said that we are leaving now,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh great!’ I went outside and started calling my parents, brother, all friends of mine to tell that they take me.”
-------------------------------- We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb
Bazootiehead-in-training
Posts: 37953 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010
I have no idea what it takes to unseat someone like Putin...outside of a bullet from within his inner circle.
-------------------------------- “It's hard to win an argument with a smart person. It's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person." -- Bill Murray
Posts: 13815 | Location: The outer burrows | Registered: 27 April 2005
Iran has butchered literally thousands of its own people during the last two or three "uprisings," and the protests so far in Russia are a pale imitation. As long as Putin has a large core of support I see no reason why he can't continue to bully and cow the dissenters. Unless, as RP notes, someone puts a bullet in him from within his own circle. Predicting that sort of black swan outcome is a fool's errand.
Posts: 12539 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005
