Officials in Russia Begin Preparing for Mass Mobilization

Russian authorities in the Volgograd region have begun preparing officials from various regions for mass mobilization.

Seventeen people participated in the training—employees of mobilization units within the region’s executive authorities and local government bodies.

Among the participants were representatives of the Astrakhan and Rostov regions, Kalmykia, the annexed Crimea, as well as the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to the Volzhsky City Administration.

Subsequently, the city administration removed a video of the mobilization drills from its social media accounts. However, the video itself and the news story remain available on other local media outlets.

On June 17, officials gathered for training in Volgograd, and the next day the training continued in Volzhsky and the village of Srednyaya Akhtuba.

At the same time, a preliminary assembly point for citizens subject to mobilization, a station for distributing draft notices, a point for receiving and transferring equipment, and a training headquarters for alerting the public and conducting defense measures were set up in Volzhsky.

In addition, in the Penza region, police, together with the military commissariat staff, have organized mass roundups of men. The raids are taking place in Penza, Kamensk, and Kuznetsk. It is alleged that men are being forced to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation to be subsequently sent to fight in the war against Ukraine.