Ukraine War: As It’s Happening

Russian police arrested more than 100 people at the weekend in the southern region of Dagestan at a protest against Moscow’s troop mobilization, NGO OVD-Info said.

Dagestan — a poor, Muslim-majority republic in the North Caucasus — has seen more men killed in the Kremlin’s military offensive in Ukraine than any other part of Russia, according to a tally made by independent Russian media of death notices published online.

OVD-Info, a human rights monitor, said late Sunday that police had arrested at least 101 people in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan in southwestern Russia.

Russian media showed videos of women arguing with police during the protest.

“Why are you taking our children?” one shouts.

Other videos show police violently detaining demonstrators.

In a bid to calm the population, Dagestan’s military commissioner Daitbeg Mustafayev, who is in charge of troop recruitment, said at the weekend only men “with special military skills” would be called up in the first instance and no conscripts would be sent to Ukraine.

Russian authorities could close the border for military-aged men as soon as this week to disrupt a mass exodus of Russians fleeing President Vladimir Putin’s draft, according to media reports citing government sources.

This Wednesday, Sept. 28, is the most likely date for when Russian men eligible for mobilization will be put on a stop list, according to the independent outlets Meduza and Khodorkovsky Live.

Both outlets link the potential border closures to Sept. 27 being the last day of annexation votes in four Kremlin-held southern and eastern Ukrainian regions.

If Moscow officially recognizes Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as part of Russia, it would mean the Kremlin would almost certainly view Ukrainian attacks there as incursions on its own territory.

Western governments have vowed sanctions in response to the Russian-backed referendums they criticize as a “sham.”

According to an unnamed Kremlin source cited by Meduza, the Russian authorities could introduce so-called “exit visas” for Russian men of military age, with enlistment offices authorized to grant or deny permission to leave the country.

Ukraine had received the National/Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) that Kyiv had been lobbying for from the United States, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

The Pentagon had approved shipment of medium and long-range NASAMS as part of a $182 million aid package for Ukraine in late August.

NASAMS missiles can simultaneously engage 72 targets, including enemy aircraft, drones and cruise missiles at a range of up to 40 kilometers.

Zelensky thanked U.S. President Joe Biden for agreeing to supply Ukraine with NASAMS, but noted that “it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians.”

Russian authorities on Sunday promised to fix the mistakes in their troop call-up for Ukraine, after some public outrage over students, older or sick people being mistakenly ordered to report for duty.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization on Wednesday, he said only people with “relevant” skills or military experience would be concerned.

But many expressed outrage after seeing — sometimes absurd — cases of authorities summoning people unfit for service.

Authorities in the southwestern Russian region of Volgograd sent a 63-year-old diabetic ex-military staffer to training camp, despite poor health and cerebral issues.

The 63-year-old came back home Friday night, according to Russian state agency RIA Novosti.

In the same region, 58-year-old school director Alexander Faltin received a call-up order despite having no military experience.

His daughter posted a video on social media that became viral.

He was allowed home after his documents were reviewed, according to RIA.

Pro-Russian authorities in the occupied southern Ukrainian city of Kherson accused Kyiv’s forces of killing two people including a former lawmaker on Sunday in a missile strike on a hotel.

“Today, at around 05:30 (0230 GMT), the Ukrainian armed forces fired a missile on the Play Hotel by Ribas” in Kherson, the regional Russian-controlled administration said in a statement.

“According to preliminary data, two people died in this terrorist act. Rescue workers are still combing the rubble to search for victims.”

Regional official Kirill Stremousov said Oleksiy Jouravko, a pro-Russian former Ukrainian lawmaker, was among the dead.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an appeal to Russians in his evening address on Saturday, warning that their pr

esident was knowingly “sending citizens to their death.”

Speaking in Russian, Zelensky called on Moscow’s forces to surrender, saying: “You will be treated in a civilized manner… no one will know the circumstances of your surrender.”

It came just hours after Russia passed a law toughening punishments for voluntary surrender and desertion following the partial mobilization President Vladimir Putin ordered this week.

Zelensky said: “It is better to refuse a conscription letter than to die as a war criminal in a foreign land.

“It is better to run away from a criminal mobilization, than to be crippled and then held responsible in court for participating in a war of aggression.

“It is better to surrender to the Ukrainian army than to be killed in the strikes of our weapons, fair strikes from Ukraine defending itself in this war.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov bitterly criticized Western nations Saturday over the Ukraine war, telling the United Nations that the United States and its allies sought to “destroy” his country.

“The official Russophobia in the West is unprecedented. Now the scope is grotesque,” Lavrov said in a fiery UN General Assembly speech.

“They are not shying away from declaring the intent to inflict not only military defeat on our country but also to destroy and fracture Russia.”

The United States, he said, was expanding the Monroe Doctrine — its 19th-century declaration of Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence — and “trying to turn the entire world into its own backyard.”

“Declaring themselves victorious in the Cold War, Washington erected themselves almost into an envoy of God on Earth, without any obligations but the sacred right to act with impunity wherever and wherever they want,” he said.

He also defended referendums in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, describing them as people claiming land “where their ancestors have been living for hundreds of years.”

“The West is now throwing a fit” on the referendums, Lavrov said.

China on Saturday at the United Nations urged Russia and Ukraine not to let effects of their war “spill over” and called for a diplomatic resolution.

“We call on all parties concerned to keep the crisis from spilling over and to protect the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

He called for “fair and pragmatic” peace talks to resolve all global issues.

“China supports all efforts conducive to the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis. The pressing priority is to facilitate talks for peace,” Wang said.

“The fundamental solution is to address the legitimate security concerns of all parties and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture.”

Russian authorities acknowledged a “significant” influx of cars trying to cross from Russia into Georgia on Saturday, days after Moscow announced partial mobilisation.

“There is a significant congestion of private vehicles… around 2,300” waiting to pass one checkpoint along the border, said the local interior ministry in a Russian region that borders Georgia.

The ministry urged people “to refrain from travelling” in the direction of Georgia.

It added that movement at the checkpoint was “difficult” and that additional traffic officers had been deployed.

Russia announced on Saturday it replaced its highest ranking general in charge of logistics as its military operation in Ukraine runs into widespread logistical problems.

“Army General Dmitry Bulgakov has been relieved of the post of Deputy Minister of Defense” and will be replaced by Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram.

A Ukrainian official in the eastern Kharkiv region said Friday that 436 bodies were exhumed from a mass burial site near the eastern city of Izyum recaptured from Russian forces.

“Today, the exhumation of bodies from the mass grave in Izyum is being completed. A total of 436 bodies have been exhumed. Most of them have signs of violent death, and 30 have signs of torture. There are bodies with a rope around their necks, with their hands tied, with broken limbs and gunshot wounds,” the Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said in a statement on social media.

Russian proxies in occupied Ukrainian territories are knocking on residents’ doors and pressuring them to vote to formally join Russia, a Ukrainian official said Friday.

Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, along with the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, are staging referendums from Sept. 23-27 that will decide whether they will be annexed by Russia.

“When a person checks ‘NO’ on the ‘ballot’ it is recorded in a ‘notebook’,” the Luhansk region’s Ukrainian Governor Serhiy Haidai wrote on his Telegram channel of the Russian proxies’ election visits.

Haidai added that the Russian proxies are accompanied by armed men on their door-to-door visits./ The Moscow Times