Putin claims call-up of reservists will end soon

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has said he expects a mobilisation of army reservists he ordered last month to bolster his country’s troops in Ukraine to be completed in two weeks.

Mr Putin told reporters after attending a summit in Kazakhstan that 222,000 of the 300,000 reservists the Russian defence ministry said would be called up have been mobilised. A total of 33,000 are already in military units and 16,000 are involved in combat, he said.

The call-up, announced by Mr Putin in September, has proved hugely unpopular in Russia, where almost all men under the age of 65 are registered as reservists.

At the same time, the Kremlin has faced domestic criticism of its handling of the war, increasing pressure on Mr Putin to do more to turn the tide in Russia’s favour. The Russian leader initially described the mobilisation as “partial” and said only those with combat or service experience would be drafted. But a decree he signed outlined almost no specific criteria. Russian media reports have described attempts to round up men without the relevant experience, including those ineligible for service for medical reasons. In the wake of the president’s mobilisation order, tens of thousands of men left Russia.

Mr Putin also said on Friday there was no need for more widespread attacks against Ukraine, such as those Russia launched on Monday in retaliation for an October 8 truck bomb explosion on a prized bridge linking Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. The Kerch Bridge explosion followed Ukraine’s recapturing of occupied areas in the country’s east and south in continuing counteroffensives that have restored Ukrainian confidence and embarrassed Russia’s military.

Russia has promised free accommodation to residents of Ukraine’s partially-occupied Kherson region who want to evacuate to Russia, a sign that Ukrainian gains along the war’s southern front are worrying the Kremlin. The Moscow-installed leader of Kherson, one of four regions illegally annexed by Putin last month, asked the Kremlin to organise an evacuation from four cities, citing incessant shelling by Ukrainian forces.

Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Moscow-appointed regional administration, said a decision was made to evacuate Kherson residents to the Russian regions of Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol, as well as to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“We, residents of the Kherson region, of course know that Russia doesn’t abandon their own, and Russia always offers a hand,” Mr Saldo said Thursday.

Russia has characterised the movement of Ukrainians to Russia or Russian-controlled territory as voluntary, but in many cases those are the only evacuation routes residents of occupied areas can or are allowed to take. In addition, an Associated Press investigation found Russian officials deported thousands of Ukrainian children – some orphaned, others living with foster families or in institutions – to be raised as Russian.

The evacuation came as Ukrainian forces pushed deeper into the Kherson region, at a slower pace than a few weeks ago. Ukrainian forces reported retaking 75 populated places in the region last month, Ukraine said late on Thursday night. General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Friday: “No one and nothing will stop us,” adding “We have buried the myth of the invincibility of the Russian army.”