The Kremlin wants to bring home several thousand soldiers illegally conscripted into the army. Observers assume higher numbers.
Russia has admitted that since last fall it has wrongly conscripted several thousand men into the army for the war against Ukraine. “More than 9,000 citizens who were illegally mobilized have been brought back home, including those who should not have been called up for health reasons,” Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov said at a meeting with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
Critical observers assume that significantly more people were illegally recruited during the mobilization ordered by Putin last September – and may never have returned. In the first few weeks in particular, chaotic conditions in the district military replacement offices were described in many places. A total of 300,000 men had been drafted for the front across the country. In retrospect, Prosecutor General Krasnow also attested to “a mass of serious problems” in his country’s military structures.
On Tuesday, a video message was also circulated on social networks, addressed to Putin by the wives and mothers of mobilized Russians. The women from the Far Eastern region of Primorye complain, among other things, that their husbands lack equipment and medicines. In addition, there are no hygiene products, which is why lice and scabies are rampant.
