Several Russians who were detained by police for laying flowers at memorials to Alexei Navalny have already been given military summonses and told they’d be sent off to join the war, according to local reports.
In St. Petersburg, police officers arrived and handed the summonses to at least six men shortly before they were released from custody, Rotonda News reports.
“People in civilian clothes came, didn’t introduce themselves, and gave out the military summonses,” the wife of one of the men was quoted telling RusNews.
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While officially, the papers only oblige the men to visit a military registration office within the next few days to “clarify” their information and register, another man said the detainees were taunted with the threat of being sent off to war.
“Two hours before we were released, we were taken into a room where some men were sitting and handing out summonses. They said if we didn’t sign, they would break our fingers. They kept repeating: ‘Well, will you go fight for us? We’re so good,’” he was quoted telling RusNews.
Grigory Sverdlin, the founder of the anti-war group “Get Lost,” posted on social media about the alarming trend, noting that one man who’d been sentenced to three days of detention was “forced” to sign a military summons as soon as he got out.
The news comes as Moscow police denied reports that an order had gone out for cops to identify all the people who turned out to pay tribute to Navalny by laying flowers at a memorial to victims of political repression. Similarly, in Rostov-on-Don, police were reportedly spotted checking the identity documents of people laying flowers for Navalny and handing out military summonses to some men.
