Within Russia, there were signs that the public was losing patience with the mobilization and the war in Ukraine.
Scuffles broke out Sunday
in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where screaming women struggled with police and tried to prevent them from dragging male protesters to police vans. It was a rare sign of dissent that underscored the dangers of regional unrest over the mobilization.
Earlier Sunday
in Dagestan, an impoverished southern region that has borne a disproportionate share of military casualties in Ukraine,
furious residents blocked a highway to protest the mobilization of 110 men from Endirey village, including some who had recently returned from the war, independent local media reported.
In eastern Siberia, meanwhile, several hundred women rallied Sunday in the city of Yakutsk, chanting “No to war” before police broke up the rally and arrested participants, according to local media outlets and activist groups.
And
in Moscow, demonstrators also took to the streets Sunday to protest reports of the conscription of some who were elderly, sick, disabled or otherwise unfit or exempt from military service.
...
Prominent Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of RT and one of the loudest cheerleaders of the war, published an astonishing Twitter thread Saturday listing
cases of people wrongly mobilized. They included a 63-year-old with diabetes and cerebral ischemia, a 35-year-old with a spinal fracture and artificial vertebrate, and sole caregivers to disabled people.