the region will not cope with the second mobilization

Tatyana Merzlyakova, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Sverdlovsk region, said that the region does not have the resources to withstand a possible second wave of mobilization. According to her, the military units of the region will not be able to provide the necessary conditions of detention for a large number of conscripts.

At a meeting with students of the Ural State University, Merzlyakova said that since the beginning of the mobilization, she had been dealing a lot with the problems of military personnel. According to her evidence, at the beginning of the draft, the educational centers faced a shortage of boards for tents, burzhuks and heat guns. The buildings were overcrowded, and many of the mobilized were forced to sleep on the bare floor. The authorities promised to rectify the situation. However, according to Merzlyakova, if the second wave of mobilization begins, “there will be no conditions to accept people in the military towns.”

Merzlyakova also reported that a military unit appeared in Verkhnei Tura of the Sverdlovsk region, which exists only according to documents, but does not exist in reality. According to her, servicemen who were wounded in Ukraine and underwent treatment are assigned to this unit. “Where do people go after the hospital? There is no answer. But if the men do not come to the unit by the appointed time, then by law they will be considered to have voluntarily left the unit, and this is already a criminal offense,” Merzlyakova said.

Yekaterinburg publication It’s My City provides figures from the report of the ombudsman for 2022. According to the document, last year the commissioner’s office received more than 6,300 appeals. 35.9 percent of them concerned the protection of the rights of servicemen.

At the beginning of the mobilization announced on September 21, reports were received from the military training center in Elany, Sverdlovsk region, that the mobilized had to spend the night outside in near-zero temperatures due to the overcrowding of the barracks and confusion. There were also deaths of mobilized people in this training center: only in the first three weeks of mobilization, four conscripts died there. Causes of death – heart attack, liver cirrhosis, drug overdose and suicide. Now, according to Merzlyakova, there are only conscript soldiers left in the Elan garrison, all of whom have been mobilized and sent to the combat zone.

• According to statistics maintained by the BBC and Mediazon, at least 1,121 Russians who were mobilized have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. 50 of the mobilized died on the territory of Russia, being in assembly points or in military units, because of health problems or because of the lack of medical assistance. At least eight people committed suicide, six died in accidents. The authors of the investigation mention that they keep statistics only from open sources, and the real number of dead may be higher.