Mobilisation ends as army admits blunders

MOSCOW has stopped mobilising men for war in Ukraine a week earlier than expected, as the Kremlin attempts to defuse the public backlash against the unpopular draft.

Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said that mobilisation “had been completed” and would end at 2pm yesterday. “Mobilisation has become a huge test for thousands of Moscow families whose fathers, husbands and sons are now serving in the army,” he said.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had said on Friday that his mobilisation process would be completed in a fortnight, once 300,000 men had been recruited.

The first Russian mobilisation since 1941 has been criticised both inside and outside of Russia for being chaotic.

Authorities admitted “mistakes”, with older or inexperienced men receiving draft papers in error. Mobilised men have also complained that they have not been given enough food or training.

In the days and weeks after the call-up was announced, hundreds of thousands of people, mainly middle-class professionals such as IT workers, fled the country, triggering businesses to talk of a “brain drain”.

Now, the first bodies of dead men mobilised only three weeks ago are already arriving back in Russia from Ukraine. The authorities are worried about increased discontent, especially in Moscow and St Petersburg.

A video captured the moment in a Moscow recruitment centre when mobilisation was cancelled. The sense of relief is palpable.

“Free people, your summons have been annulled,” said a recruitment officer standing in the middle of the office.

“Did you hear that?” said a man filming the scene.

Another man off-camera said: “We can breathe”.

Mr Putin, Russia’s president, had wanted to avoid mobilisation in Russia but, on the backfoot on the battlefield, he relented and last month ordered what he said was a “partial mobilisation”.