A young man on Monday shot a Russian military officer at close range at an enlistment office, an unusually bold attack reflecting resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men to wage war on Ukraine.
The shooting comes after scattered arson attacks on enlistment offices and protests in Russian cities against the military call-up that have resulted in at least 2,000 arrests.
Russia is seeking to bolster its military as its Ukraine offensive has bogged down.
In the attack in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin walked into the enlistment office saying “no one will go to fight” and “we will all go home now,” local media reported.
Zinin was arrested and officials vowed tough punishment. Authorities said the military commandant was in intensive care.
A witness quoted by a local news site said that Zinin was in a roomful of people called up to fight and troops from his region were heading to military bases yesterday.
Protests also flared up in Dagestan, one of Russia’s poorer regions in the North Caucasus. Local media reported that “several hundred” demonstrators took to the streets in its capital, Makhachkala.
Videos circulated online showing protesters tussling with police officers sent to disperse them.
Demonstrations also continued in another of Russia’s North Caucasus republics, Kabardino-Balkaria, where videos on social media showed a local official attempting to address a crowd of women.
Concerns are growing that Russia might seek to escalate the conflict — including potentially using nuclear weapons — once it completes what Ukraine and the West see as illegal referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine.
The voting, in which residents are asked whether they want their regions to become part of Russia, began last week and was due to end yesterday, under conditions that are anything but free or fair. Tens of thousands of residents had already fled the regions amid months of fighting and images shared by those who remained showed armed Russian troops going door to door to pressure Ukrainians into voting.
“Every night and day there is inevitable shelling in the Donbas, under the roar of which people are forced to vote for Russian ‘peace,’” Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said on Monday.
Russia is widely expected to declare the results in its favor, a step that could see Moscow annex the four regions and then defend them as its own territory.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said that no date had been set for recognizing the regions as part of Russia, but it could be just days away.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that Russia would pay a high, if unspecified, price if it made good on veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively,” he told NBC.
Elsewhere, the British government on Monday slapped sanctions on 92 businesses and individuals it said are involved with organizing the referendums in occupied Ukraine.
British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly called the votes on joining Russia “sham referendums held at the barrel of a gun.”
He said they “follow a clear pattern of violence, intimidation, torture and forced deportations.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre likewise on Monday said that the US “will never recognize” the four regions as part of Russia, and threatened Moscow with “swift and severe” economic costs.
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