(Reuters) – Uzbek workers at a waste processing plant in the western Russian city of Oryol, who were handed mobilisation notices and ordered to show up at the local conscription point, have asked their president for help, a local news outlet reported.
Moscow started the mobilisation campaign, its first since World War Two, last month as its military campaign in Ukraine stalled and Russian forces began to lose ground. Hundreds of thousands of men have since fled Russia to avoid being sent to the front lines.
According to the Istoki video report, Oryol authorities sent out a fresh batch of mobilisation notices this week, including 50 to workers of the EcoCity waste processing facility.
Half of the workers, however, are Uzbek nationals, it said, showing a group of men displaying their Uzbek passports and asking Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to intervene on their behalf.
The Uzbek embassy in Russia said on Thursday that the notices had been served to 26 Uzbeks by mistake and the issue has been resolved, as have other cases where Uzbeks – over a million of whom are estimated to work in Russia – were called up to Russian conscription points.
The mobilisation campaign drew criticism after notices were served to many people not eligible for military service, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to order officials to correct all mistakes.
Uzbekistan has warned its citizens against joining foreign armies, which qualifies as a felony under Uzbek law.
In other developments:
* Russian President Vladimir Putin showed no regrets for the war against Ukraine, insisting it was going to plan and playing down any nuclear standoff with the West, while both sides prepared for what could be a key battle in Kherson in Ukraine’s south.
DIPLOMACY
* U.S. President Joe Biden expressed scepticism about Putin’s comment that he had no intention of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. “If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it?,” Biden said in an interview with NewsNation.
* The United States is preparing a new $275 million package of military assistance for Ukraine to bolster its counter-offensive against Russian forces, a source familiar with the plan said.
CONFLICT
* Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said 23 of his soldiers were killed and 58 wounded in a Ukrainian artillery attack this week. The comments were unusual given that pro-Moscow forces have rarely admitted to major battlefield losses.
* Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure were forcing electricity cuts in the capital Kyiv and other places, officials said.
* “Shelling will not break us – to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.
* In Kherson, Ukrainian forces killed 44 Russian servicemen in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military said in a Facebook post. Ukrainian forces also destroyed an ammunition depot and a hangar with equipment, it said.
* The Russian defence ministry, which said its forces had repelled attempted Ukrainian advances in the east, said it had destroyed a Ukrainian military factory producing solid rocket fuel, explosives and gunpowder near the town of Pavlograd in the Dnipropetrovsk Region. It said it had also shot down a Ukrainian air force Mi-8 helicopter.
* Reuters could not verify battlefield accounts.
* A senior Russian government official raised the possibility that Moscow could shoot down commercial Western satellites being used to help Ukraine’s war effort.
ECONOMY
* Russia will retaliate if its state and citizens’ assets are confiscated by the European Union, the foreign ministry said.
QUOTES
“The historical period of the West’s undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end,” Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of Russian specialists.
