03:15
Flocks of Russians flee to avoid draft orders, while those who stay receive blessings
Vladimir Putin wants mistakes of Ukraine mobilisation corrected, after elderly and sick called up
- Russia’s first public mobilisation since World War II attracted criticism even from the Kremlin’s supporters and prompted thousands of men to flee abroad
- Local media and social networks reported that students and people without military experience were also summoned
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that “all mistakes” made in a call-up to reinforce Russia’s military operation in Ukraine should be corrected, his first public acknowledgement that the “partial mobilisation” he announced last week had not gone smoothly.
Russian media and social networks have reported cases of the mobilisation of elderly people, students, the sick or conscripts without military experience.
Opposition to the drive has also sparked protests and the flight of thousands of men abroad.
“This mobilisation raises many questions. We must correct all the mistakes and ensure that they do not happen again,” Putin said during a videoconference with his security council broadcast on Russian television.
The president gave the example of fathers of large families, people suffering from serious illnesses or very old people being summoned, despite these groups being exempted legally.
“If a mistake has been made, it must be corrected and those who were summoned without an appropriate reason should come home,” Putin said.
Nearly 200,000 Russians flee call-up to neighbouring countries
Russia’s announcement on September 21 of its first public mobilisation since World War II had even attracted criticism from the Kremlin’s own official supporters, something almost unheard of in Russia since it sent its army into Ukraine seven months ago.
“They’re infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite. As if they’d been sent by Kyiv,” the strongly pro-Kremlin editor of Russia’s state-run RT news channel, Margarita Simonyan, said on Saturday.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged that some call-ups had been issued in error, saying mistakes were being corrected by regional governors and the ministry of defence.
Putin notably refrained from assigning blame for the errors – either to the ministry, led by his close ally Sergei Shoigu, or to the regional officials entrusted with deciding precisely who call-up papers should go to.
Shoigu said last week that Moscow planned to enlist only 300,000 personnel. The Kremlin later denied a report by the independent Novaya Gazeta Europe that an undisclosed clause in Putin’s mobilisation decree provided for 1 million reservists to be called up.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse
