Russian military recruitment centers have been hit by a series of arson attacks

Another video showed a man whose face was hidden from the camera as he attacked an employment center about six weeks later, assembling Molotov cocktails before lighting them and throwing them into the windows of the building.

The attacks are an obstacle for Russian authorities, who have hoped to increase the number of men who will enlist in the army. Victory Day parades on May 9th.

The Kremlin banned talk of war, instead citing its invasion of Ukraine as a “special operation”which means that Vladimir Putin could not call for full mobilization, as he preferred to rely on conscription campaigns and thousands of reservists to replace the dead and wounded soldiers at the front.

But opinion polls show that Russians are starting to get tired of the war. At least 15,000 Russian soldiers they were killed in 11 weeks of fightingmore than died during the Soviet Union war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Soldiers reportedly self-harming to avoid being sent to Ukraine to fight, and desertion was reported.

Mikhail Komin, a Russian political analyst, said that although the arsons seemed largely uncoordinated, they showed a resurgence of “activists” and “agitators” despite Moscow’s efforts to ban any form of dissent.

“People who set fire to military recruiting offices didn’t think about burning anything before,” he said.