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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian military recruitment officers raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who were not in compliance, local media reported Saturday. Officers reportedly descended on Kyiv’s Palace of Sports venue after a concert Friday night by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy. Video footage aired by local media outlets appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. In the footage, officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men. Checks were also conducted at Goodwine, an upscale shopping center, and Avalon,...

A notable outcome of Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian province of Kursk — now stretching into its third week — is the Russian army’s reliance on thousands of unprepared, under-equipped, and poorly led conscripts in its attempt to repel the invasion. It’s often under-appreciated in the West just how unpopular and politically sensitive the draft is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The use of conscripts in Afghanistan and Chechnya (and their deaths in their thousands) was a huge part of the unpopularity of those wars inside Russia. In those years, the draft set off protests and a Russian “mothers’ movement”...

Vladimir Putin's commanders are forcing his conscript soldiers at gunpoint to remain at the frontline. They are using a brutal Stalin tactic to prevent Russian reservist troops leaving their positions, say men who have seen the horror of the cannon-fodder killing fields. 'People are abandoned in the trenches as if homeless and littered with corpses,' complained Russian reservist draftees in a new video appealing directly to Vladimir Putin. 'Retreat-blocking detachments were set up against us and they did not let us out of positions.' They are forced at gunpoint to remain in position, a tactic used by Stalin's cruel SMERSH...

Russia is not the only country with grievances about Ukraine. Hungary and Romania also accuse the country of persecuting ethnic groups living in Ukraine and now forcibly conscripting them into military service. Now the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission will investigate Ukraine for violations of minority rights.

Russian mobiks, as the newly mobilized recruits are called, have been complaining for weeks that they were sent to the front lines in Ukraine with no training and little to no equipment. As you would expect when troops with no discipline and no equipment are sent to the front lines, the results are not good. Over the last few days there have been reports that hundreds of mobiks sent to the front lines in they city of Makiyivka in eastern Ukraine were wiped out. Here’s a map created by the Guardian which show the location of Makiyivka:The report about what...

Hours after Aleksei Agafonov arrived in the Luhansk region on 1 November as part of a battalion of new conscripts, his unit were handed shovels and ordered to dig trenches throughout the night. Their digging, which they took turns to do because of the lack of available shovels, was abruptly interrupted in the early hours of the next day as Ukrainian artillery lit up the sky and shells started raining down on Agafonov and his unit. “A Ukrainian drone first flew over us, and after that their artillery started to pound us for hours and hours, nonstop,” Agafonov, who survived...

Dozens of mobilised soldiers have staged an extraordinary mutiny telling how they have no respect for the authorities in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A uniformed spokesman for the men is applauded by conscripts after he threatened the people should topple their rulers over the war in Ukraine. He berates an unseen commander or top official over the threats faced by conscripts called to war by the Kremlin dictator. The unnamed reservist mocks a policy in his region - the Tuva republic in Siberia - to gift a ram to each family of those mobilised. He says there are not enough walkie-talkies...

The space is usually overflowing with designers, programmers and young Russians working on their start-ups. But since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of young Russian men last month, the 33-year-old has lost much of his clientele. "Many have stopped coming," he told AFP by phone. Instead, they are filling the depleted ranks of Russia's army or they are among the tens of thousands of others who have fled south for neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Soldiers in Russia’s newly formed 3rd Army Corps fighting in Ukraine are often drunk, plagued by low morale and forced to use obsolete weapons on the battlefield, according to the Ukrainian military. The Kremlin cobbled together the formation in June to replace the tens of thousands of troops killed or injured since the start of the invasion in February. It is composed of several brigades totaling some 15,000 mostly volunteer soldiers equipped with hundreds of tanks, Newsweek reported. But according to an update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Monday, Russia’s five-month-old unit is facing...

Russian conscripts are in revolt after being treated like 'cattle' and given 'no training' as they head to the war in Ukraine. A video shows the men publicly complaining about their treatment in 'brutal, absolutely appalling conditions' after they were mobilised by Vladimir Putin. The shocking footage is just the latest evidence of the total chaos over the Russian call-up of reservists that has left even Kremlin cheerleaders in despair. The desperate recruits risk punishment by venting their fury over their plight after arriving by train in Belgorod region which borders Ukraine. One of the soldiers, acting as a spokesman...

As Russians escaping a partial military mobilization in their homeland drank their morning coffee in a cinema that opened its doors for them in northwestern Kazakhstan, Central Asia was waking up to yet more fallout from Moscow’s bloody war in Ukraine. Almost a week into the drive for soldiers that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on September 21 in response to a tide-shifting Ukrainian counteroffensive, sightings of Russians wandering the streets of cities throughout the region with backpacks and lost expressions have become commonplace. So, too, have lengthening lines at the state borders that Russian citizens can still cross without...

VIDEOThere has been a mass callup to induct new recruits into the Russian army. However, as you can see the quality of many of these recruits is of a semi-sober nature.

When Marina's two sons were conscripted last winter to the Russian army she welcomed the idea of her children doing a year's military service. "I told them that they had to serve," Marina tells me, "it was their duty to the motherland." But a few weeks later she began to worry. Her sons had been deployed to an area close to the border with Ukraine. -snip- Marina is angry about what happened. "They lied to my face," she told me. "First they lied that my sons weren't in Ukraine. Then they lied that they'd signed military contracts. Officers lied, sergeants...

LEICESTER, United Kingdom - Baptizing babies is a violation of their human rights, according to the former president of Ireland. Mary McAleese, who served in the largely ceremonial role of president from 1997-2011, also said she would not attend the Aug. 22-26 World Meeting of Families taking place in Dublin. She told the Irish Times the event, which Pope Francis will attend Aug. 25-26, will only serve as a “political rally” for the “reinforcement of orthodoxy.” McAleese told the newspaper that by baptizing children before they have reached the age of reason, the Church is creating “infant conscripts who are...

Sweden set to reintroduce conscription: broadcaster SR Sweden's center-left government will decide on Thursday to reintroduce military conscription next year, amid lingering difficulties filling the ranks on a voluntary basis and a more uncertain security situation, public broadcaster SR reported. The Nordic country mothballed compulsory military service in 2010, but military activity in the Baltic region has increased since, in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, prompting Sweden to step up military preparedness. The decision to reintroduce the draft, following recommendations by an official investigation, will cover both men and women born in 1999 or later, though...

Conscripts doing military service in the Tula oblast are reported to have been forced to sign contracts allowing them to be sent to Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers from military unit 33842 told TV Dozhd that 8 soldiers had signed themselves, while the heads of the unit had signed for the others on Aug 19. [....] His family explains that he phoned them a few days ago and said that the soldiers in his unit were being forced to sign contracts. His parents told him not to sign under any circumstances, especially since his military service was due to end on...

However, no measures are taken to improve the situation in the Army The tragedy involving the murder of three officers and three policemen by deserters again proves that even elite units (the border guard service of the FSB) have serious problems with military discipline. Victor Zavarzin, head of the Duma defense committee, recently announced that the number of convicted soldiers and officers of the border guard service increased by 36.5% in 2004 (!). The increase of the crime rate in the federal service for protection of public officials amounted to 20.3%. It should be noted that the crime rate in...

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NEAR KARBALA, Iraq (AP) - The ferocious sandstorm that halted the U.S. drive on Baghdad lifted Thursday and coalition warplanes were back in the sky in force, blasting Iraqi light armor that probed American lines as troops resumed their advance 50 miles south of the capital. Troops awoke to bright sunshine after a night when temperatures dipped into the 30s. Small groups of Iraqi armored personnel carriers -- ranging from three to six vehicles -- tested U.S. defenses. When the Iraqis closed within 10 miles, they were blasted by coalition warplanes that again ranged the skies above all of...