Putin’s Mobilization for Ukraine War Backfires With Public Shooting in Russia

(Social media footage snapshot shows the 25-year-old Zinin who shot a military recruitment officer in protest against Putin's mobilization.)

A major shooting incident occurred in Russia because of bloody tyrant Vladimir Putin’s mass mobilization order for his war in Ukraine.

A young Russian man publicly shot a chief military recruiter in a fit of anger against the forced conscription.

Mobilization After Staggering War Losses

Russia’s staggering manpower losses caused Putin last week to declare full-fledged mobilization of 300,000 men.

Kremlin sources revealed the goal is for drafting 1.2 million men. That is even though the Moscow dictator fears the draft could bring about an armed revolution that could topple his regime.

The mobilization, for the first time, brought the war to the homes of Russians. It caused more than 260,000 military-aged males to flee the country within five days, according to data by several foreign-based Russian-language opposition news media.

Chief Military Recruitment Officer Got Shot

While there has already been public unrest, with mass protest rallies against the mobilization, not so much against the war per se, in dozens of Russian cities, there were no violent outbursts.

More than 2,000 protesters have been detained already; many of those have been forcibly mobilized.

For the first time on Monday, however, a shooting occurred over the mobilization, after a gunman inflicted six gunshot wounds on a chief military recruiter inside a military enlistment office in Irkutsk, Siberia.

Mobile phone footage caught part of the moment when the 25-year-old shooter named Ruslan Zinin walked to the recruiting officer and started firing at him at close range.

“Nobody is going to fight!” the gunman shouted as he fired at middle-aged military commissar Alexander Eliseev.

At the time of the attack, Eliseev was on a stage, speaking before newly mobilized Russian conscripts set to become more of Putin’s cannon fodder in his failing war of conquest against Ukrainians.

According to Irkutsk Region Governor Igor Kobzev, the recruiter is at a hospital, in critical condition, while the shooter was caught immediately afterward.

Initial reports by Russian government media said the shooter was supposed to be drafted himself.

Later reports, however, claimed Zinin got outraged because not he himself, but his best friend, had been mobilized even though he’d not served in the Russian military. The regime at first claimed only reservists were going to be conscripted.

(Social media photo shows the attacked military recruitment office in Russia’s Volgograd region.)

Other Incidents Amid Putin’s Mobilization

In other incidents of defying Putin’s mobilization order, a young Russian set himself on fire at a bus station in Ryazan, near Moscow, after declaring he didn’t want to go fight in Ukraine.

Another incident occurred in the Volgograd region where 35-year-old Mikhail Filatov attacked a military recruitment office at night after crashing a car into it, then dousing it with gas and setting it on fire.

After he got caught, he told police officers the attack was in protest against Putin’s mobilization order.

A separate mass shooting incident also occurred in Russia on Monday; although it remains unknown whether it was linked in any way to the mobilization campaign.

A gunman wearing a shirt with a swastika stormed a school in Izhevsk, 600 miles east of Moscow, and opened fire.

He killed 13 people, including seven children, and wounded 14 others before committing suicide. The shooter was a former student in the same school named Artyom Kazantsev.

This article appeared in MorningPress and has been published here with permission.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR