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Vladimir Putin had to endure a bizarre lecture today about people fleeing his rule from fellow autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.
The Belarusian president – who needed Putin’s help to crush a pro-Western democratic movement in his country by 2020 – assured the Kremlin leader that he would win his war in Ukraine, despite growing unrest over his decision to mobilize 300,000 new troops.
The Kremlin chief looked hunched and uneasy and said little during the rally in Sochi as Russians continue to protest his mobilization edict or flee abroad to avoid being drafted.
“Our course is right, our cause is good,” Lukashenko told Putin, with a rare smile on the Russian warmonger’s lips.
‘We will win. We have no other choice. We, as Slavs, would not tolerate humiliation,’ Lukashenko told him.
However, the bombastic speech by the Belarusian leaders belies the situation on the ground.
The call for mobilization has proved wildly unpopular as hundreds of thousands of Russian men have already fled the country to avoid the call.
Outbound flights from Russia are completely sold out and the traffic jams leading to Russia’s borders are so great that they can be seen from space.
Anti-war protests have erupted across the country, and Russian media reported an increasing number of arson attacks at military recruiting offices. Yesterday, a recruiting officer was nearly shot at close range by a man who refused to enlist.
Alexander Lukashenko (R) shakes hands with Vladimir Putin during a rally in Sochi, Russia
Belarusian President Lukashenko (L) – who needed Putin’s help to crush a pro-Western democratic movement in his country by 2020 – assured the Kremlin leader that he would win his war in Ukraine
A satellite image shows trucks and cars waiting in a traffic jam near Russia’s border with Georgia as Russians desperately try to flee the country, September 25, 2022
A satellite image shows traffic at the Khyagt border post on Russia’s border with Mongolia, September 23, 2022
Lukashenko continued to monologues in Sochi yesterday, spouting rhetorical questions as Putin silently squirmed uncomfortably beside him.
‘Let’s say 30,000 or 50,000 [people] run away. If they stayed, would they be our people?’ said the Belarusian president.
‘Let them run away. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t too worried in 2020 when people left [Belarus after protests over his vote-rigging].
‘She [later] ask to let them in. So these will come back.
‘But a decision is needed: what to do with it? Let them come back or stay there?’
As Lukashenko and Putin chatted in Sochi yesterday, a young conscript shot at close range a Russian military officer outside a recruiting office in an unusually daring attack that reflected opposition to mobilization efforts.
The shooting came after scattered arson attacks at recruitment offices and protests in Russian cities against the army’s appeal, which have led to at least 2,000 arrests.
In the attack in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, 25-year-old resident Ruslan Zinin walked into the recruitment office and said ‘no one will fight’ and ‘we are all going home now’, local media reported.
A witness quoted by a local news site said Zinin was in a room full of people called up to fight and troops from his region were heading for military bases on Tuesday.
This is when gunman Ruslan Zinin, 25, walked into a Russian recruiting office in Ust-Ilimsk and shot military commissar Alexander Eliseev
Gunman Ruslan Zinin, 25, said he shot the officer in anger during calls to mobilize
Footage from the incident showed Zinin entering the office and shooting the officer before being arrested and forced to testify on camera, which he willingly did.
According to the authorities, the military commander was in intensive care.
Protests also flared up in Dagestan, one of Russia’s poorer regions in the North Caucasus.
Local media reported that “several hundred” protesters took to the streets in the capital Makhachkala on Tuesday.
Videos circulated online showing dozens of protesters struggling with police to disperse them.
Demonstrations also continued in another Russian republic in the North Caucasus, Kabardino-Balkaria, where videos on social media showed a local official trying to address a crowd of women uniting to ‘No to war!’
Protests have also erupted across Russia in anger over Putin’s decision to introduce conscription, with some 2,000 people arrested so far
Concerns are growing that Russia would attempt to escalate the conflict — possibly including the use of nuclear weapons — once it completes what Ukraine and the West consider illegal referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine.
The vote, asking residents if they want their regions to become part of Russia, began last week and ends Tuesday, on terms 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 to vote.
“Every day and night there are unavoidable shelling in the Donbas, to the roar of which people are being forced to vote for Russia’s ‘peace,'” Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said on Monday.
Russia is widely expected to announce the results in its favor, a move that could see Moscow annex the four regions and then defend them as its own territory.