Hostility towards Russia’s troop mobilisation continues, as violence broke out in an impoverished ethnic-minority region, and a gunman opened fire at a recruitment office, seriously wounding the attached commandant. A young man entered a military enlistment centre in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, and shot the commander at close range yesterday (26). Russian media reports said the attacker walked into the facility saying: “No one will go fight,” and “We will all go home now”. Local authorities said the commandant was in intensive care in “extremely grave” condition. The man, identified in the media as 25-year-old resident Ruslan Zinin, was reportedly upset when a call-up notice was served to his best friend who did not have any combat experience, which authorities say is the main criteria for the draft. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday acknowledged that some call-ups had been issued in error, and mistakes would be corrected. He said no decision had been made on closing Russia’s borders amid an exodus of military-age men.   ‘Why take our children?’   In the southern Russian region of Dagestan, at least 100 people were detained at a protest opposing conscription on Sunday (25), underscoring the anger with President Vladimir Putin’s order to send hundreds of thousands more people to fight in Ukraine. Public anger has appeared particularly strong in poor ethnic-minority areas such as Dagestan, a Muslim-majority region on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the mountainous north Caucasus. Russia’s first military mobilisation since World War II, announced by Putin last Wednesday (21), has triggered protests in dozens of cities across the country. The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said at least 100 people were detained in Dagestan’s regional capital Makhachkala. Dozens of videos posted on social media showed confrontations with police as protesters shouted: “No to war!” Footage showed a group of women chasing away a police officer, while several clips captured violent clashes including police sitting on protestors as officers attempted to make arrests. “Why are you taking our children?” one person shouted. Police earlier fired warning shots into the air after dozens of demonstrators in Dagestan blocked a major road in protest against officials, reportedly calling up more than 100 men from a village for military service.   ‘Mistakes have been made’   Unauthorised rallies are illegal under Russia’s anti-protest laws, and are rare outside of big cities. More than 2,300 people have been detained at anti-mobilisation rallies in Russia since Putin announced the drive, said OVD-Info. In an attempt to dispel public anger, Dagestan’s Governor Sergey Melikov said: “mistakes have been made” in the mobilisation rollout in the region. There have been several reports from across Russia of people with no military experience, or parents of young children being called up in the draft – despite guarantees from defence minister Sergey Shoigu that they would be excluded. Russia’s two most senior lawmakers – key Putin allies – also addressed public concerns about mobilisation, acknowledging “excesses” had stoked public anger.   ‘De-mobilising these Russians’   The Ukrainian defence ministry ridiculed Moscow’s move, posting on Twitter a mash-up of social media videos of Russian police beating and arresting men protesting conscription. “Russia still has remnants of a professional army” that the Ukrainian army “hasn’t yet destroyed”, it said in an English-language tweet, referring to this month’s rout of Russian forces from much of the northeastern Kharkiv region. “Looks like we’ll be ‘de-mobilising’ these Russians ahead of schedule.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Russians to not submit to “criminal mobilisation”. “The more citizens of the Russian Federation at least try to protect their own lives, the sooner this criminal war of Russia against the people of Ukraine will end,” he said. The situation is “catastrophic” in Crimea where Russia is using mobilisation to call up native Crimean Tatars for service, he added. “Why should their husbands, brothers, sons die in this war? For a war that one man wants. For a war against our people on our land. He [Putin] does not send his children to war,” said Zelenskyy in Russian. (This article was first published by Al-Jazeera yesterday [26])