President Vladimir V. Putin's surprise draft to strengthen his invasion of Ukraine has been receiving growing resistance in Russia, as villagers, activists and even some elected officials asked why the conscription drive seemed to be hitting rural areas harder than the big cities.
Some of the greatest anguish played hundreds or thousands of miles away from the front line, in the Caucasus Mountains and the northeastern Yakutia region, a sparsely populated expanse that straddles the Arctic Circle. Community leaders described remote villages where most of the working-age male population received conscription notices in recent days, leaving families that don't have men around to work ahead of the long winter.
We have reindeer herders, hunters, fishermen, and we have so few of them anyway, Vyacheslav Shadrin, chairman of the council of elders for a small indigenous group known as the Yukaghirs, said in a phone interview. They are the ones who are most likely to be drafted.