Russia finishes mobilisation for Ukraine

GBNEWS24DESK//

Russia announced on Friday it had finished calling up reservists to fight in Ukraine, having drafted hundreds of thousands of people in a month, with more than a quarter of them already sent to the battlefield.

The announcement appears to bring to a close a divisive mobilisation drive – Russia’s first since World War Two – which had seen tens of thousands of men flee the country and gave rise to the first sustained public protests against the war.

“The task set by you of (mobilising) 300,000 people has been completed. No further measures are planned,” Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin at a televised meeting in the Kremlin. He said 82,000 had already been sent to the combat zone and the rest were training.

Putin thanked reservists “for their dedication to duty, for their patriotism, for their firm determination to defend our country, to defend Russia, which means their home, their family, our citizens, our people.”

Both men acknowledged “problems” in the early days of the call-up. Shoigu said initial issues in supplying newly mobilised troops had since been resolved. Putin said mistakes had probably been inevitable as Russia had not carried out a mobilisation for such a long time, but that lessons had been learned.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he doubted Moscow was finished calling soldiers up.

Russian forces “are so poorly prepared and equipped, so brutally used by their command, that it allows us to presume that very soon Russia may need a new wave of people to send to the war,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly televised address.

The mobilisation which Putin ordered last month after his forces suffered major setbacks on the battlefield was the first time most Russians faced a direct personal impact from the “special military operation” launched in February.

More than 2,000 people were arrested in anti-mobilisation protests, notably in parts of the country populated by ethnic minorities who complained they were being disproportionately targeted to be sent to the front.

Putin and other officials have acknowledged some mistakes, including calling up some men who were too old or unfit, but said problems would be resolved. Tens of thousands of Russian men are believed to have fled the country to avoid being forced to fight, many to neighbouring former Soviet republics.