Military Call-up
Race against time for Ukraine, Russia as winter approaches
The onset of autumnal weather, with rains making fields too muddy for tanks, is beginning to cloud Ukraine’s efforts to take back more Russian-held territory before winter freezes the battlefields, a Washington-based think tank said Sunday.
Russia, meanwhile, pressed on with its call-up of hundreds of thousands of men to throw into the seven-month war, seeking to reverse its recent losses. It also deployed suicide drones Sunday against the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, Ukrainian authorities said. No casualties were immediately reported.
The Russian mobilization — its first such call-up since World War II — is sparking protests in Russian cities, with fresh demonstrations Sunday.
It is also opening splits in Europe about whether fighting-age Russian men fleeing in droves should be welcomed or turned away.
For Ukrainian and Russian military planners, the clock is ticking, with the approach of winter expected to make fighting more complicated. Already, rainy weather is bringing muddy conditions that are starting to limit the mobility of tanks and other heavy weaponry, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
But the think tank said Ukrainian forces are still gaining ground in their counteroffensive, launched in late August, that has spectacularly rolled back the Russian occupation across large areas of the northeast and which also prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new drive for reinforcements.
The partial mobilization has triggered an exodus of men seeking to avoid the draft — and sharp differences of opinion in Europe about how to deal with them.
Read: It had no choice, Russia repeats insistence on Ukraine
Lithuania, a European Union member-country that borders Kaliningrad, a Russian Baltic Sea exclave, said it won’t grant them asylum. “Russians should stay and fight. Against Putin,” Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis tweeted.
His counterpart in Latvia, also an EU member and bordering Russia, said the exodus poses “considerable security risks” for the 27-nation bloc and that those fleeing can’t be considered conscientious objectors against the invasion.
Many “were fine with killing Ukrainians, they did not protest then,” the Latvian foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, tweeted. He added that they have “plenty of countries outside EU to go.”
Officials in other EU nations, however, say Europe has a duty to help, and fear that turning away Russians could play into Putin’s hands, feeding his narrative that the West has always hated Russians and that the war is being waged to safeguard their country against Western hostility.
“Closing our frontiers would fit neither with our values nor our interests,” a 40-strong group of senators in France said in a statement. They urged the EU to grant refugee status to Russians fleeing mobilization and said turning them away would be “a mistake by Europe in the war of communication and influence that is playing out.”
The mobilization is also running hand-in-hand with Kremlin-orchestrated votes in four occupied regions of Ukraine that could pave the way for their imminent annexation by Russia.
Ukraine and its Western allies say the referendums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south and the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions have no legal force. The votes are set to wrap up Tuesday but are being dismissed in Ukraine and the West as a sham, with footage showing armed Russian troops going door to door to pressure Ukrainians into voting.
Read: Russian men seek refuge abroad, fearing call-up to fight in Ukraine
Ukraine’s Reintegration Ministry said Russia has brought people from Belarus, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Syria, Togo, Uruguay and Venezuela to act as supposed outside observers. The ministry warned that they “will be punished,” without specifying how.
In cities across Russia, police have arrested hundreds of protesters against the mobilization order. Women opposed to the call-up protested Sunday in the Siberian city of Yakutsk. Videos shared by local media showed a crowd of a few hundred people, mostly women, holding hands and marching in a circle around a group of police. Police later dragged some away or forced them into police vans. News website SakhaDay said the women chanted pacifist slogans and songs.
At least 2,000 people have been arrested in recent days for similar demonstrations around the country. Many of those taken away immediately received call-up summons.
Other Russians are reporting for duty. Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu have said the order applies to reservists who recently served or have special skills, but almost every man is considered a reservist until age 65 and Putin’s decree kept the door open for a broader call-up.
The Kremlin said its initial aim is to add about 300,000 troops to its forces in Ukraine, struggling with equipment losses, mounting casualties and weakening morale. The mobilization marks a sharp shift from Putin’s previous efforts to portray the war as a limited military operation that wouldn’t interfere with most Russians’ lives.
The call-up is being accompanied by tougher punishments for Russian soldiers who disobey officers’ orders, desert or surrender to the enemy. Putin signed those measures into law on Saturday.
Read: Zelenskyy promises Ukraine will win as Russia redoubles effort
The Ukrainian government stopped allowing most men ages 18-60 to leave the country immediately after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion under a general mobilization order intended to build a 1 million-strong military.
Russian men seek refuge abroad, fearing call-up to fight in Ukraine
Military-aged men fled Russia in droves Friday, filling planes and causing traffic jams at border crossings to avoid being rounded up to fight in Ukraine following the Kremlin’s partial military mobilization.
Queues stretching for 10 kilometers (6 miles) formed on a road leading to the southern border with Georgia, according to Yandex Maps, a Russian online map service.
The lines of cars were so long at the border with Kazakhstan that some people abandoned their vehicles and proceeded on foot — just as some Ukrainians did after Russia invaded their country on Feb. 24.
Meanwhile, dozens of flights out of Russia — with tickets sold at sky-high prices — carried men to international destinations such as Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Serbia, where Russians don’t need visas.
Among those who reached Turkey was a 41-year-old who landed in Istanbul with a suitcase and a backpack and plans to start a new life in Israel.
“I’m against this war, and I’m not going to be a part of it. I’m not going to be a murderer. I’m not going to kill people,” said the man, who identified himself only as Yevgeny to avoid potential retribution against his family left behind in Russia.
He referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal.”
Yevgeny decided to flee after Putin announced a partial military call-up on Wednesday. The total number of reservists involved could be as high as 300,000.
Some Russian men also fled to neighboring Belarus, Russia’s close ally. But that carried risk.
The Nasha Niva newspaper, one of the oldest independent newspapers in Belarus, reported that Belarusian security services were ordered to track down Russians fleeing from the draft, find them in hotels and rented apartments and report them to Russian authorities.
The exodus unfolded as a Kremlin-orchestrated referendum got underway seeking to make occupied regions of Ukraine part of Russia. Kyiv and the West condemned it as a rigged election whose result was preordained by Moscow.
Read: Protests sparked as Putin orders a partial military call-up
German government officials voiced a desire to help Russian men deserting military service, and they called for a European solution.
“Those who bravely stand up to Putin’s regime and thereby put themselves in great danger can apply for asylum in Germany on the grounds of political persecution,” the spokesman for German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.
The spokesman, Maximilian Kall, said deserters and those refusing to be drafted would receive refugee status in Germany if they are at risk of serious repression, though every case is examined individually.
But they would first have to make it to Germany, which has no land border with Russia, and like other European Union countries has become far more difficult for Russians to travel to.
The EU banned direct flights between its 27 member states and Russia after the attack on Ukraine, and recently agreed to limit issuing Schengen visas, which allow free movement across much of Europe.
Four out of five EU countries that border Russia — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland — also recently decided to turn away Russian tourists.
Some European officials view fleeing Russians as potential security risks. They hope that by not opening their borders, it will increase pressure against Putin at home.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said Thursday that many of those fleeing “were fine with killing Ukrainians. They did not protest then. It is not right to consider them as conscientious objectors.”
The one EU country that is still accepting Russians with Schengen visas is Finland, which has a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia.
Read: After Russian retreat, the Ukrainian flag raised in the retaken city
Finland border guards said Friday that the number of people entering from Russia has climbed sharply, with media reporting a 107% increase compared with last week.
At Vaalimaa, one of the busiest crossings on the border, the line of waiting cars stretched for half a kilometer (a third of a mile), the Finnish Border Guard said.
Finnish broadcaster MTV carried interviews with Russian men who had just crossed into Finland at the Virolahti border crossing, including with a man named Yuri from Moscow who said that no “sane person” wants to go to war.
A Russian man from St. Petersburg, Andrei Balakirov, said he had been mentally prepared to leave Russia for half a year but put it off until the mobilization.
“I think it’s a really bad thing,” he said.
Valery, a man from Samara who was heading to Spain, agreed, calling the mobilization “a great tragedy.”
“It’s hard to describe what’s happening. I feel sorry for those who are forced to fight against their will. I’ve heard stories that people have been given these orders right in the streets — scary.”