Photo: Irina Babicheva / "161.ru"
The Bataysk city court in the Rostov region found guilty the administrator of the Bataysk City public site, Olesya Shishkanova, who published a video of complaints from servicemen with the participation of her mobilized brother. She was fined 30,000 rubles under the article on “discrediting” the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. A message about this was published in the Telegram channel of the community. Shishkanova herself said in a conversation with The Insider that after the release of the video, unprepared mobilized people were not sent to the front line for about two weeks, but then they nevertheless began to be sent.
On the footage, a serviceman of the 1st battalion, 2nd company of the 102nd regiment claims that the mobilized were given rusty ammunition and machine guns, the command does not respond to the requests of the servicemen.
“We don’t want to die, we don’t want to be a laughingstock and some kind of clowns. We eat at our own expense. <…> We have a common fund, we try to support each other. The whole group, almost in its entirety, does not want to die just like that, for the sake of some stupid interests or some commanders who do not know what to do with us. If we are sent to the front line, we do not know what to do, how to behave in battle. When artillery strikes, they fire at us, no one knows how to behave.”
Shishkanova explained that since yesterday there was no contact with her brother.
“What tasks they perform there, the brother does not disclose, since this is prohibited. At the same time, they did not conduct combat training with them. Since yesterday, there has been no contact with my brother. He said if everything goes well, he will get in touch in three days.
The situation did not affect the conduct of the public in any way, as we conducted, and we will conduct, no one threatened. I have a video with faces in my possession, as my brother sent it to me. In social networks, they “shaded” so that the guys would not be recognized, they are still not in a safe place. We attached the full video to the court materials, but the video was not considered. All claims from the court to the text of the post. We will certainly appeal the fine.”
Shishkanova's brother was mobilized on September 24, in mid-October she published a video where a relative and 11 other mobilized from Bataysk complain that they are going to be sent to the front without proper preparation. They stayed at the training unit in Persianovka for two days. Shishkanova herself opened a collection of assistance for the military in Bataysk, asking the command what exactly the military personnel needed. On the hotline of the Ministry of Defense, the woman was never answered.
This is the first time the court has imposed a fine for signing such a video. In recent months, dozens of videos have been published on social networks in which Russian mobilized from different cities of Russia complain about the poor attitude of the command, lack of uniforms and promised payments. They were actively quoted in the media and social networks. Mobilized in commercials declare their refusal to go to war with rusty weapons of the 1970s, and also without proper training. In one of the latest videos in early November, more than 100 mobilized from Chuvashia at the training center in Ulyanovsk complained about the lack of promised payments (195 thousand rubles). They also demanded that the head of the republic, Oleg Nikolaev, immediately transfer to them the 400 million rubles promised for the war and distribute them equally among the mobilized. The men collected signatures under a collective appeal – on November 3, more than 2,000 people were ready to sign the document.