This is the time that an uneasy-looking Alexander Lukashenko, a fellow autocrat, was the source of the bizarre lecture that forced Vladimir Putin to sit through about how people were fleeing his rule.
The Belarusian president told Putin that he would win his war in Ukraine despite the mounting dissent over his intention to mobilize 300,000 more soldiers. The Belarusian president required Putin’s assistance to put an end to a pro-Western democratic movement in his nation in 2020.
The head of the Kremlin appeared hunched and uneasy while speaking sparingly at the meeting in Sochi as Russians continued to oppose his mobilization order or leave the country to avoid being drafted.
Putin cracked a rare smile when Lukashenko remarked, “Our course is right, and our cause is right.”
“We’ll prevail. We are without other options. He was advised by Lukashenko that humiliation would not be tolerated by Slavs.
However, the grandiose rhetoric of the Belarusian leader belied the reality on the ground.
Thousands of Russian men have already left the country to evade the call-up, demonstrating how controversial the call for mobilization has become.
All aircraft leaving Russia are fully booked, and there are massive traffic backups at the country’s borders that can be seen from orbit.
Across the nation, anti-war demonstrations have broken out, and Russian media have reported an increase in the number of arson assaults against military recruitment centers. Yesterday, a guy who refused to be conscripted shot an enrollment officer practically point blank.
Yesterday in Sochi, Lukashenko persisted in his monologue, asking rhetorical questions as Putin sat still and uncomfortably close to him.
Let’s suppose that 30,000 or 50,000 [people] flee.
Would they be our people if they stayed? The president of Belarus remarked.
“Let them flee.” I don’t know what you think about it, but in 2020 when people fled [Belarus amid demonstrations over his vote-rigging], I wasn’t too concerned.
They [later] want to be permitted inside. Therefore, these ones will also return.
However, a choice must be made about what to do with them. Let them return or let them remain there?
In an extraordinarily brazen act that reflected opposition to mobilization efforts, a teenage conscript shot a Russian military officer at close range at an enlisting office yesterday while Lukashenko and Putin were in Sochi.
The incident followed sporadic arson assaults on enrollment offices and demonstrations against the military call-up in Russian cities that saw at least 2,000 people arrested.
According to local media, during the assault in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, resident Ruslan Zinin, 25, entered the recruiting office and said, “No one will go to battle” and “We will all go home immediately.”
According to a witness who was cited by a local news outlet, soldiers from Zinin’s area were on their way to military camps on Tuesday and Zinin was among a large group of persons called up to battle.
Video of the event shows how Zinin stormed into the workplace and yelled at the employee before being apprehended and compelled to voluntarily speak to the crime on camera.
The military commander was reportedly being treated in critical care.
In Dagestan, one of Russia’s less developed areas in the North Caucasus, protests also erupted.
In its capital, Makhachkala,’several hundred’ protesters reportedly went to the streets on Tuesday, according to local media.
Videos of protestors fighting with the police deployed to break them up have been circulating online.
Additionally, protests persisted in Kabardino-Balkaria, another Russian North Caucasus province, where footage posted on social media showed a local official trying to address a group of women who had gathered to cry “No to war!”
Concerns are mounting that, after conducting what the West and Ukraine see as illegitimate referendums in occupied portions of Ukraine, Russia may attempt to escalate the situation, perhaps deploying nuclear weapons.
Voting on whether locals want their territories to join Russia started last week and concludes on Tuesday, but neither the process nor the results can be considered impartial or free.
After months of conflict, tens of thousands of locals had already left the areas, and those who stayed there published photos of armed Russian soldiers intimidating Ukrainians into voting by going door to door.
The governor of the Donetsk area, Pavlo Kirilenko, said on Monday that “every night and day there is inescapable bombardment in the Donbas, beneath the noise of which people are driven to vote for Russian “peace””.
It is predicted that Russia would proclaim the results in its favor, which might lead to Moscow annexing the four areas and defending them as its own.