Gazprom Employees Forced to Join Army as “Volunteers”

Employees of the Russian monopoly Gazprom have been forcibly mobilized. More than 80 people were taken to the military enlistment office and registered as “volunteers,” Russian TV channel Dozhd reported on Sept. 29.

Employees of several Gazprom enterprises in the Nadym district of the Tyumen region were asked to bring their military IDs to work to verify their data. People were taken to the military enlistment office and sent for a medical examination. They were all promoted to the fitness category and enrolled as volunteers without being handed a summons. From there they were taken to training the next day.

According to the wife of one of the Gazprom employees , on Sept. 26, her husband was told to go home for his documents and military ID, supposedly for data verification.

“Andrey returned with documents. He was taken by bus to the military registration and enlistment office with 12 colleagues and told to prepare for a medical examination by a therapist. After the examination, nearly all the employees were taken away, their military category upgraded to ‘A’ (fit), and “volunteer” was written on the cards in their files. When one of the employees saw this inscription and asked what it meant, they answered: ‘Well, since you came, it means you are a volunteer,’” the wife said.

In a conciliatory gesture, the speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Vyacheslav Volodin, posted on Telegram that the deputies have no “armor” against mobilization. Yet since  the announcement of mobilization, not a single member of the State Duma has agreed to go to the front to support the Russians.

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On Sept. 20, within a day, the State Duma adopted amendments to the Russian legislation, including those on mobilization. Deputies introduced terms of up to 10 years for evading conscription into the army and added the concept of “mobilization.” They launched an initiative to send even graduates of military departments to war, but the deputies themselves were not subject to mobilization.