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On the night from June 23 to June 24, more arson attempts were noticed at Russian military registration and enlistment offices, this time in Belgorod and Perm, reports Baza.
In Perm, four bottles with incendiary liquid were thrown into the office of the Military Commissariat for Kirovsky District in Zakamskaya Street. Two were smashed, and the other two remained whole. According to the publication, there was no fire. The arsonists fled the scene. The police are looking for them.
The same night, Molotov cocktails went through the windows of a military enlistment office in Belgorod, setting fire to a desk in one of the rooms. An unidentified male perpetrator smashed the ground floor window of the military commissariat and tossed two fire bottles into room 106. The resulting fire was put out six minutes later.
This was the fourteenth such attempt. The previous arson was attempted on May 21, when a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a recruitment office in the town of Igra in Udmurtia. On the night of May 20, a military enlistment office was shot at with pneumatic weapons in the town of Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky in Irkutsk Region. Security services detained a resident of nearby Angarsk by the name of Maxim Smolny on suspicion of his complicity in the incident.
Attacks on military enlistment offices are becoming more and more frequent against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and spreading rumors about the upcoming mobilization. The first known case of arson at a military enlistment office since the beginning of the war was reported in Lukhovitsy, Moscow Region. On February 28, a 21-year-old local smashed the windows and tossed a few Molotov cocktails inside. In addition, the offender painted the gate of the institution in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and left “a provocative caption about the special operation of the Russian Armed Forces”, as the media referred to it. The suspect was apprehended on March 8, broke free from the police station on March 13, and was detained again on the evening of the same day. A criminal case was initialed under Article 214 of the Criminal Code (Vandalism). The defendant is facing up to three years in prison.
Similar arson attempts were noticed at military enlistment offices in Omsk, Balashikha, Yаroslavl, Nizhnevartovsk, Voronezh, Berezovsky, Shuya, Gukovo, Volgograd, Zubova Polyana in Mordovia and Pronsk in Ryazan Region. In Penza and Ivanovo, fires were noticed in abandoned buildings used by enlistment offices earlier. In Cherepovets, two 16-year-old teenagers also threw bottles with incendiary liquid at the military office building on the night of May 8. The suspects were later detained.