Social mnedia video’s of packed rain, airports and highways of Rissian men who do NOT want be drafted to fight for a losing war with the Ukraine….
Protests in the streets of a Communist country….
Threats of using nuclear warfare, that ring hollow….
The Russian President is having his Ukraine conflict eat away at his country, something had avoided up to now…..
Time is NOT on the Russian leader’s side….
A day after President Vladimir V. Putin announced a call-up that could sweep 300,000 civilians into military service, thousands of Russians across the country received draft papers on Thursday and some were being marched to buses and planes for training — and perhaps soon a trip to the front lines in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin’s escalation of the war effort was reverberating across the country, according to interviews, Russian news reports and social media posts. As the day wore on, it became increasingly clear that Mr. Putin’s decision had torn open the cocoon shielding much of Russian society from their leader’s invasion of a neighbor.
Mothers, wives and children were saying tearful goodbyes in remote regions as officials — in some cases, ordinary schoolteachers — delivered draft notices to houses and apartment blocks. In mountainous eastern Siberia, the Russian news media reported, school buses were being commandeered to move troops to training grounds.
Russian officials said the call-up would be limited to people with combat experience. But the net appeared wider, and some men decided it was best to head for the borders…
Here’s what we know:
A day after Putin escalated the war, Russian men were receiving draft papers and some were fleeing the country. The war’s biggest prisoner exchange prompted jubilation in Ukraine, but some backlash in Russia.
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‘One man chose this war.’ Harsh words fly at a U.N. Security Council meeting.
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As freed Ukrainian soldiers return, joy and relief ripple across the country.
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Some men flee Russia, fearing they could be called up to fight.
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Russians are already receiving draft papers.
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The European Union weighs its response to Russians fleeing Putin’s call-up announcement.
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Putin confidant Viktor Medvedchuk is the most prominent captive released in a prisoner swap.
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How Putin’s mobilization might play out: ‘The Daily’ explores the next phase of the war.
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A northeastern city reclaimed by Ukraine attempts to return to normalcy……
Key developments
- Moscow-backed officials in occupied parts of Ukraine are preparing for “referendums” from Friday to Tuesday on the prospect of joining Russia. The moves indicated an escalation in Russia’s apparent plans to annex swaths of Ukraine. Officials in occupied Kherson are working to obtain “personal data from local residents” under the pretext of providing humanitarian aid, and authorities in the eastern city of Starobilsk are banning residents from leaving during the referendum, Ukraine’s general staff wrote on Facebook.
- Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy head of the country’s Security Council, said Donbas and other occupied regions “will be accepted into Russia,” warning that Moscow would be open to using strategic nuclear weapons for the “protection” of those territories.
- Thousands of Russians took to public spaces to protest Russia’s partial military mobilization, and authorities arrested at least 1,300 people on Wednesday, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. Video footage from rallies across the country shows police officers pushing protesters to the ground, stuffing them into buses and, in at least one instance, attempting to punch an apparent protester in the head on a busy street.
- Speaking in Russian, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Russians to resist the mobilization in his nightly address Thursday. “Fifty-five thousand Russian soldiers died in this war in six months. Tens of thousands are wounded and maimed. Want more? No? Then protest. Fight back. Run away. Or surrender to Ukrainian captivity. These are options for you to survive,” he said.
- Two U.S. military veterans and five Britons were among the nearly 300 people freed Wednesday as part of the prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. The deal, brokered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also led to the release of 215 Ukrainians and 55 Russians. Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Kremlin opposition politician from Ukraine who is considered a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also freed.
- The prisoner exchange sparked anger on Russia’s far right.
Battleground updates
- Russia struck two Ukrainian cities with Iranian-made attack drones, according to Ukraine’s southern military command. The so-called kamikaze drones struck a tugboat in the southern city of Ochakiv and a nonresidential building in Kryvyi Rih in the country’s heartland, but no one was injured, the military command said on Facebook. Ukrainian officials reported their first encounter with the Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones last week, after Iran began sending them to Russia in August.
- Five people were injured and at least one person died in overnight strikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Oleksandr Starukh said Thursday on Telegram. Residential buildings were destroyed by rockets, he said, adding that the extent of the damage was still being clarified. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said nine rockets hit a hotel, trapping people under the rubble. He said a power station was also struck, leaving people in the south of Zaporizhzhia without electricity.
- Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, was “subjected to massive rocket fire” overnight into Thursday, Vitaliy Kim, the regional governor, said. While no one was injured or killed in the strikes, largely carried out with S-300 antiaircraft missiles, residential and government buildings were damaged, as well as gas and water pipes, a cinema and a theater, Kim said. Air raid sirens were reportedly still blaring around 10 a.m. local time.
- “Russia is likely to struggle with the logistical and administrative challenges of even mustering the 300,000 personnel,” Britain’s Defense Ministry saidThursday following Putin’s announcement of a military mobilization. The ministry assessed that those called up to serve “are unlikely to be combat effective for months.”….
image…Cars leaving Russia sit in long lines Thursday at a checkpoint at the border with Finland. …Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty