Russian Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu said on Friday that the goal of a draft 300,000 reservists to supplement Moscow’s forces in Ukraine had been met, announcing the end of a recent draft that had been ruined by protests, chaotic bureaucracy and lack of proper training.
Speaking at meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, Mr. Shoigu said that the Ministry of Defense had stopped sending enlistment notices and had no plans for further drafts.
He said that 82,000 troops had been sent to Ukraine, with about half of them taking part in the fighting. The rest are currently being trained, he added, according to a report on the meeting provided by the Kremlin. The department will continue to accept volunteers, he said.
Despite Mr Shoigu’s comments, the maneuver will not officially end until Mr. Putin signs a decree declaring that, which has not happened yet.
The two spoke Friday at Putin’s residence outside Moscow. At the meeting, Putin also acknowledged rarely that the war in Ukraine had shown the need to improve the Russian military. He told Shoigu that “corrections” were needed in the design of the Russian military and asked the defense minister to quickly prepare “necessary decisions”.
Announced by Putin in September, the draft has caused shock waves throughout Russia. Thousands of men panicked and tried to flee the country, clogging border crossings with neighboring countries, and forcing many to leave their jobs and families.
Despite Mr. Putin’s pledge that the draft would be primarily aimed at those with prior combat experience and would receive appropriate training before deploying to Ukraine, reality at least some of the enlisted men had never served in the army and were sent to combat just weeks after being called up. Russian news sites reported that a number of recruits died on the battlefield shortly after the announcement of the mobilization.
On Friday, Mr Shoigu acknowledged that there had been problems with “various sources of supplies and allowances” at the early stages of the draft. Putin said that “necessary conclusions need to be drawn” and that the work of the enlistment offices “needs to be modernized”.
“Today, the most important thing is to equip, train, coordinate and everything related to make people feel confident if they need to participate directly in combat operations,” Putin said.
While many regions of Russia, including Moscow, have announced that they have fulfilled their draft quotas, there has not been a rush of Russian men returning home from abroad. That may be due to fears that the Kremlin could announce a new wave of maneuvers: Military experts have pointed out that 300,000 people – many of them untrained and ill-equipped – may not enough to tilt the military balance in Russia’s favor in Ukraine.
