On September 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the decree “On the Declaration of Partial Mobilization in the Russian Federation.” Three years later, the document formally remains in force: no decision отменing it has been issued.
According to Mikhail Liberov, whose name was changed at his request, a representative of the rights organization School of the Conscript, mobilization call-ups were stopped on November 1, 2022, but the decree itself has been kept in place.
“The draft of people into the armed forces through mobilization was halted on November 1, 2022, but the decree itself has not been withdrawn so that contract soldiers can be kept at the front,” Liberov says.
He says that if the document were revoked, military contracts could then be terminated on various grounds, including starting a business, loss of trust, insult, or loss of an officer’s honor.
Protests against the decree began just a week after it was published. Relatives of servicemen recorded video appeals, demanded rotation, banged on empty pots, organized rallies, and placed slogans on cars calling for their husbands to be brought home.
But according to the text, those actions produced no result. The authorities did not offer mobilized men a way to return home and, at the same time, the authors say, recruited another around one million new contract soldiers through pressure, threats, deception, and persuasion.