Array
More than 730 people were detained across Russia at the latest protests against the country’s mobilisation decree, a rights group said, three days after president Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s first military draft since the second world war. The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it was aware of detentions in 32 cities, from St Petersburg to Siberia. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russian law, which also forbids any activity considered to defame the armed forces.
A new law signed by Putin says Russian troops who refuse to fight, desert, disobey or surrender to the enemy could now face a jail sentence of up to 10 years, according to Russian media reports. The law was approved by the parliament during the week.
Russia’s deputy defence minister, Dmitry Bulgakov, has been dismissed from his post. Bulgakov, who has been in charge of military logistics since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion, has been replaced by Col Gen Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of the National Defence Management Centre, who oversaw Russia’s siege of Mariupol.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, addressed the UN general assembly on Saturday, casting opposition to Russia’s assault on its neighbour as limited to Washington and countries under its sway. “The official Russophobia in the west is unprecedented. Now the scope is grotesque,” Lavrov told the general assembly. He criticised the west for not engaging with Russia, saying: “We have never stepped away from maintaining contact.”
Lavrov, in a news conference following his speech to the assembly in New York, said the Ukrainian regions where votes were under way would be under Moscow’s “full protection” if they were annexed by Russia, including with nuclear weapons.
