Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill Friday allowing authorities to issue electronic notices to draftees and reservists amid the fighting in Ukraine, sparking fears of a new wave of mobilization.

Russia’s military service rules previously required the in-person delivery of notices to conscripts and reservists called up for duty. Under the new law, the notices issued by local military conscription offices will continue to be sent by mail, but they would be considered valid from the moment they are put on a state portal for electronic services.

In the past, many Russians avoided the draft by staying away from their address of record. The new law closes that loophole in an apparent effort to create a tool for quickly beefing up the military ahead of a widely anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.

Recipients who fail to show up for service would be prohibited from leaving Russia, would have their drivers’ licenses suspended and would be barred from selling their apartments and other assets.

The bill Putin signed into law was published on the official register of government documents.

Kremlin critics and rights activists denounced the legislation as a step toward a “digital prison camp” that gives unprecedented powers to the military conscription offices.

Lyudmila Narusova, the widow of former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, was the only house member who spoke against the measure when the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, considered the bill Wednesday.

Narusova, whose late husband was Putin’s mentor, charged that the bill contradicts the country’s constitution and various laws, and strongly objected to its hasty approval.

The swift enactment of the law fueled fears of the government initiating another wave of mobilization following the one that Putin ordered in the fall.

Russian authorities deny that another mobilization is being planned. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week that the measure was needed to streamline the outdated call-up system in view of the flaws that were revealed by last fall’s partial mobilization.

“There was a lot of mess in military conscription offices,” he said. “The purpose of the bill is to clean up this mess and make the system modern, effective and convenient for citizens.”

Putin announced a call-up of 300,000 reservists in September after a Ukrainian counteroffensive that pushed Russian forces out of broad areas in the east.

The mobilization order prompted an exodus of Russian men that was estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands.

Observers say the new law appears to give authorities a mechanism for quickly beefing up the ranks in preparation for a new Ukrainian attack.

“A possible reason is that they see that the Ukrainians are getting ready for an offensive,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter turned Kremlin critic who has left Russia.

Gallyamov has been labeled a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities, a designation that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations aimed at undermining the recipient’s credibility. He also has been put on a wanted list for criminal suspects.

Gallyamov said the law could fuel smoldering discontent but would be unlikely to trigger protests.

“On the one hand, there is a growing discontent and reluctance to fight, but on the other hand there is a fear of escalating repressions,” he said. “People are put before a difficult choice between going to battle and dying, or landing in prison if they protest.” 
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Some 400,000 survivors of February’s earthquake in southern Turkey have arrived in the coastal city of Mersin over the past two months, according to its mayor, who has pleaded for more government help to cope with the influx.

Located a couple hundred kilometers west of the fault lines that caused the February 6 earthquake, Mersin was spared any damage. However, the city is now struggling to cope with the influx of survivors, along with Syrian refugees, according to its mayor, Vahap Secer.

“The population of our city was 1.9 million. Currently, it has reached 2.7 million, 400,000 of which are asylum-seekers and 400,000 of which are earthquake victims. Housing prices have increased by 200 percent,” Secer told the Haberturk news website last month.

Some of the earthquake survivors have been given shelter at the city’s vast exhibition hall. Yasar Batman, his wife and their four children fled their home in the devastated city of Antakya and arrived in Mersin a week after the earthquake.

“Everywhere had collapsed, the people around us all died. Our house did not collapse, but the gas in the house exploded. Now, slowly, we try to get over this,” Batman told VOA. “Thank God, they are taking care of us here, they try to make up for what we lack as much as they can. Mersin municipality provides us with bread and food in the best way they can. I hope they will build a house for us as soon as possible, and we can go to our home city as soon as we can.”

In an adjacent cubicle in the exhibition hall, Abdurrahim Bal described how he tried to remain in Antakya.

“We asked for a tent and other things while we were there in Antakya, but so far we have not received anything,” he told VOA. “If they give us one, we will go there. But life is difficult there, even if you live in a tent. It is raining and there are storms.”

Local concerns

The influx of survivors is causing problems in Mersin. Local officials say basic services like the health system and water supply are under growing pressure.

City residents told VOA prices are already high because of the influx of refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

“A few years ago, life was easier. Rents were lower, shopping was cheaper. After Syrians came here, the rents went up and the prices doubled. After the earthquake, it went up even more,” said Ayten Demirezer, a longtime resident of Mersin.

Her husband, Kalender Demirezer, said the pressure on the city is overwhelming.

“It is not possible for this city to support 400,000 people,” he told VOA. “Still, many of our friends are looking for a house to rent. And now those people came from Hatay [province, in the earthquake zone]. Syrian [refugees] also have rights. They are also human beings, but this city cannot cope with this. We need to support our own people first.”

Mersin is not in the official disaster zone and so does not qualify for emergency government funds. In February, 47 charities and nongovernmental organizations in Mersin wrote an open letter calling for the city to be included in the emergency funding plan. The city’s mayor says Ankara has so far declined to give the city special status so it can receive extra support.

Memet Aksakal contributed to this report.
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China is promising not to sell weapons to either Ukraine or Russia, The Associated Press reports.
Russia’s Pacific Fleet launches war games, missile launches in a massive show of force, according to Reuters.
Russian forces have brought large amounts of provisions and water supplies to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and may barricade a skeleton staff inside, says Kyiv’s state atomic agency Energoatom.

At least five people were killed and 17 were wounded on Friday from a Russian airstrike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. According to Ukraine’s National Police, S-300 missiles struck 10 apartment buildings and other sites. The two top floors of a five-story building collapsed after the strike. Rescue teams were looking for survivors.

A child was pulled alive from the rubble but died on the way to a hospital, said Daria Zarivna, a senior official in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office. Donetsk Regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko also said seven people were believed to have been trapped under the debris.

“The evil state once again demonstrates its essence,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post accompanied by footage of a damaged building. “Just killing people in broad daylight. Ruining, destroying all life.”

Russia renews Bakhmut assault

Ukrainian troops have been forced to withdraw from some parts of Bakhmut after a renewed Russian assault on the ravaged city. In its daily assessment, Britain’s military said Friday, “Russia has re-energized its assault on the Donetsk Oblast town of Bakhmut as forces of the Russian MoD [Ministry of Defense] and Wagner Group have improved co-operation.”

Ukrainian officials say Russia has been drawing down troops from other areas on the front for a major push on Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to capture for nine months to regain momentum of the all-out invasion it launched more than a year ago.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian commanders had redirected troops to Bakhmut from other areas.

“The enemy is using its most professional units there and resorting to a significant amount of artillery and aviation,” she wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“Every day, the enemy carries out in Bakhmut from 40 to 50 storming operations and 500 shelling episodes,” she noted. The British update said the Ukrainians still held western districts of the town but had been subjected to particularly intense Russian artillery fire during the previous two days.

“Ukrainian forces face significant resupply issues but have made orderly withdrawals from the positions they have been forced to concede,” it said.

China makes promise

In other key developments, China is promising it won’t sell weapons to Russia or Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said Friday. He made that vow in response to Western concerns that Beijing could provide military assistance to Russia.

China has asserted its neutrality in the conflict, while Western nations have imposed sanctions against Moscow. Qin added that China would also regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces say they are discovering a growing number of Chinese components in Russian weaponry used in Ukraine. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, senior adviser to President Zelenskyy, told Reuters via a video call that in “the weapons recovered from the battlefield, we continue to find different electronics.”

Fleet shows force

The entire Russian Pacific Fleet was put on high alert Friday for military exercises that will include practice missile launches in a massive show of force amid tensions with the West over the war in Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the goal of the war games is to measure the capability of Russia’s armed forces to mount a response if threatened.

The drills also will involve nuclear-capable strategic bombers and other warplanes in addition to the naval aviation of the Pacific Fleet, Shoigu said.

The Russian Defense Ministry released videos showing warships and submarines heading to the maneuvers, while its military has concentrated most of its forces on the front lines in Ukraine.

On Ukraine’s northern border, Russian ally Belarus said Friday that its pilots had finished training in Russia, where they are learning how to operate Su-25 fighter planes.

“The acquired knowledge and skills will serve to ensure the military security of the Union State,” Minsk’s Defense Ministry said, referring to Belarus’ political union with Russia.

Moscow stocks nuclear plant

Russian forces have brought large amounts of provisions and water supplies to the nuclear power plant (ZNPP) they captured in southeastern Ukraine after invading last year, Kyiv’s state atomic agency Energoatom said Friday.

The agency said this activity might indicate Russia is preparing to keep employees inside because of a dire shortage of qualified staff at Europe’s largest nuclear plant and in anticipation of Ukraine’s much-expected counter-offensive.

“Given the intense shortage of nuclear specialists needed to operate the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and fearing a Ukrainian offensive, the [Russians] are preparing for the long-term holding of ZNPP employees as hostages,” Energoatom said.

“The invaders have already brought a lot of provisions and water to the station,” the agency added in a statement. “The occupiers will probably not allow the station staff to leave after one of the regular work shifts, forcibly blocking them at the ZNPP,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Ukraine investigates beheading video

In a tweet Friday, Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy thanked British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for condemning the “inhumane execution” of a Ukrainian soldier. “Together we must stop the aggressor & put an end to terror,” he said.

Ukrainian officials on Wednesday opened an investigation into a video on social media purportedly showing one of Kyiv’s soldiers being beheaded.

News agencies could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video. Zelenskyy said the video shows the “execution of a Ukrainian captive” and that “everyone must react. Do not expect that it will be forgotten that time will pass.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A 50-year-old Spanish elite athlete, Beatriz Flamini, emerged Friday from a cave in southern Spain, where she had lived 70 meters underground for 500 days, as part of an experiment on the effects of isolation on the human mind and body.

With her support team limiting media coverage of her emergence so as not to overwhelm her, Flamini climbed out of the Los Gauchos cave near Motril, smiled and waved to the small crowd. Noting she had been underground for a year-and-a-half, Flamini asked, “Who was buying the beer?”

Elena Mera, a spokeswoman for the project, known as Timecave, told the Spanish news agency EFE the isolation experiment was Flamini’s idea. An experienced mountaineer, solo climber and self-sufficiency expert, she approached the media production company Dokumalia in 2021 about the idea of living in a cave alone with no external contact for 500 days. 

According to her support team, Flamini entered the cave November 20, 2021, taking with her two GoPro cameras to document her time, 60 books and 1,000 liters of water and food supplies. She had no way to measure time. They say she spent her time doing exercises to keep herself fit, painting and drawing, and knitting woolly hats.

Flamini was monitored by a group of psychologists, researchers, speleologists — specialists in the study of caves — and physical trainers, who watched her every move and monitored her physical and mental well-being, though they never made contact.

EFE reports her experience has been used by scientists at the universities of Granada and Almeria and a Madrid-based sleep clinic.

While her support team has claimed the 500 days in isolation underground is a new world record, the Reuters news service reports a spokesman for the Guinness Book of World Records was not able to immediately confirm that claim.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Russia on Thursday said there would be no extension of the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal beyond May 18 unless the West removed a series of obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer.

The Ukraine grain Black Sea export deal was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July last year to help alleviate a global food crisis worsened by conflict disrupting exports from two of the world’s leading grain suppliers.

“Without progress on solving five systemic problems … there is no need to talk about the further extension of the Black Sea initiative after May 18,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“We note that despite all the high-sounding statements about global food security and assistance to countries in need, the Black Sea Initiative both served and continues to serve exclusively commercial exports of Kyiv in the interests of Western countries,” the ministry said.

To help persuade Russia to allow Ukraine to resume its Black Sea grain exports last year, a separate three-year agreement was also struck in July in which the United Nations agreed to help Russia with its food and fertilizer exports.

Russia said the two agreements were “interconnected parts of one ‘package,'” and scolded the U.N. Secretariat for what it said was a distortion of the facts.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that “discussions, communications are still going on with the parties,” and that U.N. officials were determined to ensure the implementation of both deals.

He said in relation to Russia’s exports, “there’s still a lot of critical issues that need to be resolved over payments and other technical issues” that U.N. officials were trying to fix.

But he noted that “there’s been some concrete results that contribute to larger grain trade volumes, lower freight rates and an increased number of ships that have called at Russian ports for fertilizer and lowering in insurance.”

“So we’ve made some progress, but we continue to push to make more,” Dujarric said.

Western powers have imposed tough sanctions on Russia over its Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. Its food and fertilizer exports are not sanctioned, but Moscow says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance are a barrier to shipments.

The Foreign Ministry said that Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) had to be reconnected to the SWIFT payment system, that supplies of agricultural machinery and parts needed to be resumed, and that restrictions on insurance and reinsurance needed to be lifted.

Other demands include access to ports, the resumption of the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline that lets Russia pump the chemical to Ukraine’s port, and the unblocking of assets and the accounts of Russian companies involved in food and fertilizer exports.

“The removal of obstacles to domestic agricultural exports was supposed to take place within the framework of the implementation of the Russia-UN Memorandum,” the ministry said.

Russia said there had been a failure of the inspection regime of ships carrying grain from Ukraine.

“Currently, 28 vessels carrying more than 1 million tons of food are awaiting inspection in the territorial waters of Turkey,” the Foreign Ministry said.

It accused U.N. staff in the Joint Coordination Center of refusing to draw up an inspection schedule.

“In turn, an even more difficult situation has developed around the registration of bulk carriers,” the ministry said, denying that Russia was responsible for any of the congestion and accusing Ukrainian port officials of accepting bribes to accelerate registration.
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