KYZYL, Russia -- Police in Russia's Siberian Tyva region have detained at least 27 women and dispersed a rally against the mobilization of local men for Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Dozens of women chanted "No to mobilization! No to genocide!" before the rally was dispersed just minutes after it started on the central Arat Square in Tyva's capital, Kyzyl, on September 29.
One of the detained women told RFE/RL that police registered the women's personal data and took their fingerprints.
After the rally was dispersed, seven police vehicles remained on the square and a specially equipped vehicle came to the site and started washing the square with water.
Tyva's military commissioner, Artyn Demir-Ool, said that the republic had "accomplished its mobilization quota," adding that an unspecified number of Tyvan men had been mobilized since the call-up was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21.
They have had been settled at the base of the 55th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which is engaged in the ongoing war in Ukraine, he said.
Last weekend, a protest was held by women in another region in Russia's Far East, Yakutia, over what locals feel is a "disproportionate" recruitment of ethnic minorities to the war in Ukraine, calling it "a genocide" against them.
The largest protest against the mobilization by an ethnic region was held over the weekend in Makhachkala, the capital of Daghestan in the North Caucasus.
The mobilization for the war in Ukraine has been met with countrywide protests in general and the mass flight of men potentially eligible for military duty from Russia.
Some estimates say that almost 300,000 men have left the country since the mobilization was announced.