President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced a partial mobilization in Russia.
“I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff to declare partial mobilization in the Russian Federation,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
Putin added that he had already signed the relevant decree. Mobilization activities have started on Wednesday.
According to the decree published on the Kremlin website, the Russian citizens from 18 and 50 fall under military mobilization, they will be paid as the military personnel serving under contract.
The contracts of the professional military personnel will be automatically extended till the end of the mobilization.
People working at the enterprises producing weapons are free from conscription.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced a partial mobilization in Russia.
“I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff to declare partial mobilization in the Russian Federation,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
Putin added that he had already signed the relevant decree. Mobilization activities have started on Wednesday.
According to the decree published on the Kremlin website, the Russian citizens from 18 and 50 fall under military mobilization, they will be paid as the military personnel serving under contract.
The contracts of the professional military personnel will be automatically extended till the end of the mobilization.
People working at the enterprises producing weapons are free from conscription.
After Putin’s speech, it was left to his defence minister to provide the details and try to dampen down the fears of Russian men across the country about this sudden “partial mobilisation” to Ukraine.
After all, proclaiming you support a “special operation” and actually going to fight are two very different things.
Sergei Shoigu said some 300,000 reservists would be called up – a fraction of the 25 million Russia has. They won’t be taken all at once but according to need, he said.
He insisted that students would not be used, they could “be calm” he said, and ‘keep going to class’. Neither will conscripts be sent to the front – a move which would have been very unpopular.
Instead, Russia says it will be using men who have battle experience.
In his comments, Sergei Shoigu also claimed fewer than 6,000 Russian soldiers (5,937) had been killed in action, a number far below the estimates of Western intelligence agencies, and even less than has been reported in open sources.
But it’s the first time in months that Moscow’s given a figure (perhaps that was also meant to reassure those about to get their call-up papers).
Despite the soft voice and calm tone of the defence minister, this is a big shift in approach. The war that many Russians have been trying, largely, to ignore, has now been brought much closer to home for tens of thousands of them and their families.
Until today the Kremlin has been claiming that its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine was going according to plan. Not any more.
By announcing a “partial mobilisation” of military reservists, Vladimir Putin has conceded that Russia needs more soldiers on the battlefield.
From the Russian president, no hint of regret over his decision seven months ago to invade Ukraine.
The Kremlin leader blamed all Russia’s difficulties on the West, which he accused of wishing the “disintegration of Russia.”
Russia, he said, “would use all means at its disposal to defend Russia if its territorial integrity was threatened.”
With Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine about to hold so-called referendums on joining Russia, that is a clear message to Ukraine and the West: Don’t try to take back land we have seized and will claim as our own.
And just to make the point, he dropped in this threat: “Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction.”
