The latest Russia war mobilization reportedly has the country grabbing men off the street, and homeless shelters, to fight in Ukraine.
A mail courier and a mid-50s "very drunk" man with a walking disability were pulled out of Moscow streets last week by police and military officials to be called to serve the war effort, The Washington Post reported.
"I have no idea why they took him," another man taken to a nearby enlisting office, a 30-something pacifist identified only as a Alexei, told the Post of the drunk man.
Among the locations men are being taken from: homeless shelters, train stations, apartment building lobbies, offices, hostels, cafes, and restaurants, according to the report.
Alexei was rounded up at his office Tuesday by two police offers and military officials in street clothes, getting orders to go with them voluntarily or they would "use force," he told the Post.
"I was panicking," Alexei told the Post. "I'd never been detained before. Everyone knows that if you are detained by the police in Russia, it's very bad."
Needing reinforcements in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has put his war efforts at risk of escalated opposition within Russia by the latest mobilization. Also, more than 300,000 Russian men and their families have reportedly fled the country to avoid being conscripted into military service.
Activist Grigory Sverdlin left Russia and launched a group in Georgia called Go By The Forest, which helps advise Russian men on how to avoid the draft or how to surrender in Ukraine, the Post reported.
"Obviously, people are very stressed because they are worried they will be pushed to shoot other people," Sverdlin told the Post. "So people are afraid not only for themselves, but about taking part in this unjust war."
A 24-year-old the Post identified as Yevgeny is in hiding far from Moscow, having deleted his social media accounts and cut contacts with friends.
"I don't want to kill people, and I don't want to be killed, so I really have to lie low now," Yevgeny told the Post. "But even here, I don't feel safe. We live at a time when your neighbors could report on you. They might call police and say that there is a young guy staying in this house when he should be fighting fascists in Ukraine.
"I am panicking, and my mom is very nervous. I'm stressed, and I'm depressed. I try not to think how long this could go on, because you can go crazy."
Yevgeny told the Post that two of his friends have been conscripted and already on the front after little training.
"I have a couple of friends who supported the war believing that there are Nazis there who kill poor Ukrainians and that Ukrainians should be liberated and so on, but they are changing their opinions after mobilization," he added to the Post. "They have started to ask questions and surf the internet for information.
"They don't want to die, especially when you don't understand why you should die. What is the point?"
Putin said Friday that 222,000 of the targeted total of 300,000 have been conscripted to date in the mobilization that will take about two more weeks.
But even Putin's United Russia party members are questioning the illegality of the draft.
"It is inadmissible to grab everyone on the street indiscriminately," Andrei Klishas told the Post.
Dissent in Russia will only grow with the mobilization, according to Sverdlin.
"It's the regime's agony, because quite a common opinion in Russia now is that this war is lost," he told the Post. "And it seems that just giving out summonses, detaining many thousands of people and sending them to war just buys this regime a bit more time. But it's just buying time, because, obviously, these people who were caught on the streets now won't make good soldiers because they don't know how to fight."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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