Raids From Moscow To Siberia

Putin risks a revolt.

The Russian war machine is drowning in its own blood, while the Kremlin dictator is frantically trying to assemble a new army. The occupiers’ casualties are breaking all records, reaching two thousand or more killed and wounded every day.

The total number of casualties since the full-scale invasion began has exceeded one and a half million, and the supply of “cannon fodder” is rapidly running out. That is precisely why Russia has been swept by an unprecedented wave of roundups, which is shaking major cities—from Moscow to Siberia. The mobilization, which has continued uninterrupted since the fall of 2022, has taken on utterly savage forms, writes journalist Irina Uzlova for “Channel 24”.

“Hybrid-voluntary mobilization” in 33 regions

Currently, two types of roundups are taking place on the territory of the aggressor state: the detention of conscripts for immediate deployment to active duty and the harsh coercion of adult men into signing contracts. Together with experts, we have aptly characterized this phenomenon as “hybrid-voluntary mobilization.” People are seized by force and then forced to sign a contract so that the authorities can cynically declare: “You yourselves voluntarily entered into a contract with the Ministry of Defense.”

The scale is staggering. Official reports of coercion to sign contracts have come from at least 33 regions of Russia, as well as from the temporarily occupied Crimea. That’s more than a third of Russia’s regions! Mass raids have swept through Buryatia, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Karelia, Transbaikal, the Krasnoyarsk and Primorsky Krais, and the Penza, Rostov, Orenburg, and Novosibirsk regions. And these statistics do not even include complaints from conscripts—we are talking exclusively about adult men.

In Moscow, law enforcement is conducting a veritable hunt for conscripts. Men are being rounded up in the metro—particularly at the “Tekstilshchiki” station—seized at multifunctional service centers, and right on the street. Police officers demand that they unlock their phones and show the “Gosuslugi” app. Students are picked up right at their apartment doors, without even giving their families time to bring a proof of enrollment to the assembly point on Ugreshskaya Street. They’re even seizing people with metal plates in their legs—no one cares about any medical diagnoses. It takes one or two days from the time of detention to being sent to a military unit.

The “Sirius 55” Recruitment Center in Omsk: Beatings and Abductions

While security forces in Moscow at least try to disguise their actions, outright terror is being waged in Siberia. The main source of complaints in Omsk—Siberia’s third-largest city—has been the “Sirius 55” recruitment center. Reviews on 2GIS maps are flooded with desperate cries for help from relatives. People are writing directly in their native languages: “They’re kidnapping people off the street, beating them, bringing them to this place, detaining them illegally, and forcing them to sign a contract.”

Recruiters aren’t deterred by the lack of a passport or military ID. A man came to care for his bedridden mother—he was abducted and sent to war. A migrant worker went to a store without any documents or a phone—a day later, his family was told that he had “signed a contract.” People are brought to the recruitment center even after suffering a stroke, and others who literally stepped out onto the street in light clothing. People are beaten and held incommunicado until they break. Those at greatest risk are men over thirty who are in the reserves, debtors, people with child support obligations, or those on probation, who are blackmailed with the threat of prison.

Assault “cannon fodder” and the recruitment of despair

Why does the Kremlin need this mass roundup? The enemy’s losses are colossal, while Russian assault troops survive on the battlefield for literally 20–30 minutes. The Russian authorities and their propaganda-religious wing themselves refer to these fighters as “cannon fodder.” The Bryansk Diocese’s website actually stated: “Assault troops, or as they’re also called, ‘cannon fodder’—are a symbol of resilience, self-sacrifice, and an unbreakable will.” The term was later removed, but screenshots and cached pages remain.

And for this “meat” to even make it a little way to the trenches, they need body armor—but supplies are running out there, too. Our drones are striking critical factories—for example, the Bashkir Soda Company in Sterlitamak, the only manufacturer in the Russian Federation of components for armor materials. Putin tried to compensate for this failure by recruiting in Africa through Lavrov, but there aren’t enough foreign mercenaries. They need to throw their own citizens into the furnace of war.

Will the Russians oust Putin

Putin dreams of assembling a new army of 300,000–500,000 men, but herding people into pens is only a tenth of the battle. They must be trained, armed, clothed, and provided for. And most importantly—once people driven by the whip, with their lives in ruins, are armed, they may bare their teeth. And then, for the Kremlin dictator himself, an inevitable catastrophe will begin.

Putin is terrified of protests. It’s no coincidence that he justifies tightening control over the internet by citing the riots in France, while Roskomnadzor demands identification on social media. Russia already scores 4 out of 100 on internet freedom, steadily approaching North Korea’s score of zero. The Kremlin is building a digital Gulag because it understands that the people’s patience is cracking at the seams.

The crackdowns in 33 regions are the regime’s death throes. And when these hundreds of thousands of armed troops return, the Russian people will simply oust Putin.

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