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By Karl Ritter And Hanna Arhirova<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities Saturday as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow, while hundreds of people were arrested in Russia for protesting a military mobilization order aimed at beefing up the country\u2019s troops in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine\u2019s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19. Oleksandr Starukh, the Ukrainian governor of Zaporizhzhia, one of the regions where Moscow-installed officials organized referendums on joining Russia, said a Russian missile hit an apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing one person and injuring seven others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine and its Western allies say the referendums underway in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south and the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions have no legal force. They alleged the votes were an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to seize Ukrainian territory stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said the voting \u201clooked more like an opinion survey under the gun barrels,\u201d adding that Moscow-backed local authorities sent armed escorts to accompany election officials and to take down the names of individuals who voted against joining Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in occupied regions to undermine the referendums and to share information about the people conducting \u201cthis farce.\u201d He also called on Russian recruits to sabotage and desert the military if they are called up under the partial troop mobilization President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you get into the Russian army, sabotage any activity of the enemy, hinder any Russian operations, provide us with any important information about the occupiers \u2013 their bases, headquarters, warehouses with ammunition,\u201d Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin on Saturday signed a hastily approved bill that toughens the punishment for soldiers who disobey officers\u2019 orders, desert or surrender to the enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To carry out the referendums that started Friday, election officials accompanied by police officers carried ballots to homes and set up mobile polling stations, citing safety reasons. The votes are set to wrap up Tuesday. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHalf of the population fled the Donetsk region because of Russian terror and constant shelling, voting against Russia with their feet, and the second half has been cheated and scared,\u201d .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Ukrainian capital, about 100 people from the Russia-occupied city of Mariupol, which is part of the Donetsk region, gathered to protest the referendum, covering themselves in Ukrainian flags and carrying posters \u201cMariupol is Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey ruined the city, killed thousands of people, and now they are doing some kind of profanation over there,\u201d said Vladyslav Kildishov who helped organize the rally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elina Sytkova, 21, a demonstrator who has many relatives left in Mariupol even though the city spent months under bombardment, said the vote was \u201can illusion of choice when there isn\u2019t any.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s \u201clike a joke, because it\u2019s the same as it was in Crimea, meaning it\u2019s fake and not real,\u201d she said, referring to a 2014 referendum that took place in Crimea before Moscow annexed the peninsula in a move that most of the world considered illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mobilization ordered by Putin marked a sharp shift from his effort to cast the seven-month war as a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d that doesn\u2019t interfere with the lives of most Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russian police moved quickly to break up demonstrations against the mobilization that were held in several cities across Russia on Saturday, arresting over 700 people. More than 1,300 protesters were arrested during a previous wave of protests on Wednesday, and many of them immediately received call-up summons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian leader and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the order applied to reservists who had recently served or had special skills, but almost every man is considered a reservist until age 65 and Putin\u2019s decree kept the door open for a broader call-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Russian Ministry said that the partial mobilization initially aimed to add about 300,000 troops to beef up its outnumbered volunteer forces in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government stopped allowing most men ages 18-60 to leave the country immediately after Russia\u2019s Feb. 24 invasion under a general mobilization order intended to build a 1 million-strong military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across Russia\u2019s 11 time zones, men hugged their weeping family members before being rounded up for service amid fears that a wider call-up might follow. Some media reports claimed Russian authorities planned to mobilize more than 1 million recruits, which the Kremlin denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving to assuage public fears over the call-up that could erode Putin\u2019s grip on power, authorities announced that many Russians working in high tech, communications or finance would be exempt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After some of the pilots of the Russian flag carrier Aeroflot and other airlines reportedly received call-up notices, pilots and traffic controllers unions moved quickly to secure a government promise that they, too, would be excluded from the mobilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Russian men bought up scarce and exorbitantly priced airline tickets out of the country as as rumors swirled about a pending border closure. Thousands others fled by car, creating lines of traffic hours or even days long at some borders. The massive exodus underlined the unpopularity of the war and fueled public outrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a sign the Kremlin was starting to worry about a backlash, the head of a top state-controlled TV station harshly criticized military authorities for hastily sweeping up random people to meet mobilization targets instead of calling up people with specific skills and recent military service, as Putin promised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RT chief Margarita Simonyan lashed out at military conscription offices for \u201cdriving people mad\u201d by rounding up those who weren\u2019t supposed to be drafted. \u201cIt\u2019s as if they were tasked by Kyiv to do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed regional leader of Chechnya who sent his forces to fight in Ukraine and repeatedly called for tougher action, suggested that Moscow should more broadly engage personnel from law-enforcement agencies in the fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He denounced those fleeing the mobilization as cowards and argued that police and various paramilitary agencies that number a total of 5 million personnel together with the military would make a much better-trained and motivated fighting force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we leave 50 percent of the personnel to fulfil their duties, 2.5 million others will blow any Western army away and we won\u2019t need any reservists,\u201d Kadyrov said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin\u2019s mobilization order followed a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive that forced Moscow\u2019s retreat from broad swaths of the northeastern Kharkiv region, a humiliating defeat that highlighted blunders in Moscow\u2019s military planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Defense Ministry on Saturday announced the dismissal of Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov from the post of deputy defense minister in charge of logistics. It didn\u2019t mention the cause for his ouster, but the move was widely seen as a punishment for the flaws in supporting operations in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originally published at AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Karl Ritter And Hanna Arhirova Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities Saturday as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow, while hundreds of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[2588,2193,456,2154],"class_list":["post-7595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-kremlin","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n