Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s mobilisation drive to bolster its forces fighting in its faltering invasion of Ukraine will end within two weeks but defended the army from criticism of the draft.
Russia’s president on Friday said about 220,000 men had been drafted into the army since he called up reserves and moved to annex four occupied regions of south-eastern Ukraine. He said this was a sufficient effort to bolster forces on the battlefield.
“Nothing additional is being planned,” Putin said, adding that he did not “see any need” to further strengthen the 1,100km frontline in Ukraine.
Russia’s army continues to flail nearly eight months after Putin first sent troops into Ukraine and his initial plan of a blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv failed.
Western officials say Putin’s mobilisation of men unfit for combat — even if the figures are in the hundreds of thousands — is unlikely to shift momentum in Russia’s favour in the immediate future, as Ukraine presses ahead with its counteroffensive.
The draft has also proved deeply unpopular in Russia, from which more men fled to Kazakhstan in the first two weeks alone following Putin’s decree than joined the army.
Some officials and pro-Kremlin commentators have also criticised widespread reports of “excesses” during the draft despite promises from Putin to only call up a limited force.
In some regions, draft officers and police have press-ganged people off the street to join the army, while several men have died at the front — apparently skipping the basic training Putin promised they would be offered.
But Putin said the training was meant to take between 10 and 25 days, indicating he saw no problems with the reports. He said 33,000 people had joined their combat units and 16,000 of them were taking part in combat operations.
Despite Putin’s threat that he would use nuclear weapons to defend the Ukrainian regions he now considers part of Russia, Kyiv’s forces have continued to advance since he held a ceremony in the Kremlin and a rally on Red Square to celebrate the annexation.
In particular, western officials say Ukraine is close to retaking all of the southern Kherson region up to the Dnipro river as soon as next week. On Thursday Russia-installed officials appealed to Moscow to help evacuate the local population.
On Friday a western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said “it is conceivable” that Ukrainian forces could recapture much of Kherson by the end of next week.
“We think that the Russian position [in Kherson] is extremely fragile,” the official said. “And you would have noticed that in the last 24 hours, the occupation authorities have announced that they are evacuating the civilian population from that area, really underlining how vulnerable they are on that [right] flank, and also demonstrating the absurdity of the claimed annexations of Kherson as well as Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas.”
Moscow on Monday responded to its battlefield setbacks and the bomb attack on the bridge linking the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to Russia with its largest aerial assault since the war’s early days. The response was spearheaded by the Russian forces’ new commander, Sergei Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon”.
Putin said there was “no need” for further strikes on such a scale after he claimed the army hit 22 of the 29 Ukrainian infrastructure targets.
The western official said Ukraine’s allies “do not think that Russia’s mobilisation will affect the battlefield situation” between now and winter.
The new recruits “are already on the battlefield”, the official said. “There is evidence that they have been taking casualties. It is clear that they have been fielded with very, very limited training and very, very poor equipment. It is really unlikely that they have any sort of positive impact in the near term.”
The person added: “We question whether Russia has the resources available to mobilise that number of troops, to equip them and train them properly, and certainly to equip them and train them in a way which makes them fit to conduct operations during the winter.”
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2022-10-14 15:09:43Z
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