Russia says 200,000 drafted into army
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More than 200,000 people have already been drafted into Russia’s armed forces since President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilisation two weeks ago, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu says.
Shoigu had announced that he planned to enlist 300,000 men with previous military experience to bolster Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where it has suffered a series of defeats in recent weeks.
However, the official decree did not include a figure, and officials are keen to allay public fears that the actual number could be higher, as even pro-Kremlin figures voice concern that people are being recruited indiscriminately.
Reports have surfaced of men with no military experience or past draft age receiving call-up papers, adding to outrage that has reignited dormant – and banned – anti-war demonstrations.
Tens of thousands of men seeking to avoid the draft have already fled abroad and the public remains concerned that the mobilisation could be expanded.
Putin acknowledged mistakes in the mobilisation last week and said they should be corrected.
Shoigu also said on Tuesday that those volunteering to fight should not be turned away without a “serious reason”.
Speaking at a consultation with other senior military figures, he said new units were receiving instruction at 80 training ranges and six training centres, according to a Defence Ministry posting on Telegram.
Putin was set on Tuesday to formalise Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian territories, despite the fact that its forces do not fully control any of them.
Ukraine and its allies have refused to recognise the annexations, which they say are illegal.
In their biggest breakthrough in the south since the seven-month war began, Ukrainian forces recaptured several villages in an advance along the strategic Dnipro River on Monday, Ukrainian officials and a Russian-installed leader in the area said.
In the east, Ukrainian forces have been expanding an offensive after capturing the main Russian bastion in the north of Donetsk, the city of Lyman, hours after Putin proclaimed the annexation of the province last week.
Ukrainian forces in the south had destroyed 31 Russian tanks and one multiple rocket launcher, the military’s southern operational command said in an overnight update.
Ukrainian video footage from Novopetrivka, a newly recaptured village in Kherson region, showed Ukrainian soldiers removing a Russian flag from a power pylon, wiping their feet on it and setting it alight.
They then raised a Ukrainian flag.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed leader in occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson province, told Russian state television that Ukrainian troops had recaptured the southern town of Dudchany along the west bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects the country.
Dudchany is about 30km south of where the front stood before Monday’s breakthrough, indicating Ukraine’s fastest advance of the war in the south.
Kirill Stremousov, another Russian-installed official in Kherson, was cited on Tuesday by the RIA agency as saying that the Ukrainian advance had been halted at Dudchany by air strikes and artillery and had come up against a defensive line.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that Ukraine’s army had seized back towns in a number of areas, without giving details, and that heavy fighting was underway in several locations.
On the eastern front, Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed leader in Donetsk, said that Russian forces were building a serious line of defence around the city of Kreminna after being pushed back.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, a Russian missile crashed into the outskirts of the eastern Ukraine-controlled city of Kramatorsk.
A Reuters reporter on the scene said the missile had gouged a huge crater in the backyard of a house.
The carcass of a second missile that apparently failed to detonate sat about 150 metres away in the front yard of another house after crashing through its roof.
A woman was taken to hospital after her husband pulled her from the rubble of their home.
Reuters
