After widespread criticism and mass arrests, Putin makes his first public admission of mobilization problems.
President Vladimir Putin has said that “all mistakes” should be corrected in a call to step up Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, his first public admission that the “partial mobilization” he announced last week had not gone smoothly.
There were widespread public expressions of dissatisfaction from officials and citizens at the way the mobilization was being handled, including complaints about draft officers sending draft papers to clearly ineligible men.
Thousands of men have fled Russia to avoid military service billed as recruiting individuals with military experience and required specializations, but which often disregarded individuals’ service records, health status, student status, or even age.
More than 2,400 people were arrested during unauthorized anti-war protests in more than 30 cities, according to the organization OVD-Info, and some of them were promptly issued with draft papers — which the Kremlin said was perfectly legal.
“Many questions arise in the course of this mobilization, and all mistakes must be corrected and prevented in the future,” Putin said.
“I’m thinking, for example, of fathers with many children or people who suffer from chronic illnesses or who are already over military age.”
Russia’s September 21 announcement of its first public mobilization since World War II drew criticism from even official Kremlin supporters, something almost unknown in Russia since it deployed its army to Ukraine seven months ago.
“They make people mad, as if on purpose, as if out of malice. As if they were sent from Kyiv,” Margarita Simonyan, the fiercely pro-Kremlin editor of Russia’s state news channel RT, said on Saturday.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged some convocations had been made in error and said mistakes are being corrected by regional governors and the defense ministry.
Putin notably refrained from attributing the errors to either the ministry, led by his close ally Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, or the regional officials tasked with deciding exactly who should receive draft papers.
Shoigu said last week that Moscow plans to recruit only 300,000 workers. The Kremlin later denied a report by the exiled independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe that a secret clause in Putin’s mobilization decree provided for the call-up of one million reservists.
Meanwhile, Russian authorities have opened more military recruiting offices near Russia’s borders in an apparent attempt to intercept some of the military-age men attempting to flee the country overland.
A new military service office has opened at the Ozinki checkpoint in the Saratov region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, regional officials said on Thursday. Another recruitment center was to be opened at a crossing point in the Astrakhan region, also on the border with Kazakhstan.
Makeshift Russian conscription offices were set up earlier this week near the Verkhny Lars border crossing into Georgia in southern Russia and near the Torfyanka checkpoint on the Russia-Finland border. Russian officials said they would issue draft notices to any eligible men attempting to leave the country.