Russia is turning to ‘dad’s army’ as it recruits volunteers up to the age of 60 to replace those killed in vicious Ukraine fighting
- Russian media says it is asking retired soldiers to join up in two Siberian cities
- 60,000 reservists, mainly from outside Moscow, are already in active service
- The Russians need recruits of tank commanders, snipers and engineers
- NATO thinks 15,000 Russian troops have died while Ukraine puts toll at 18,300
Russia is turning to ‘dad’s army’ as it recruits volunteers up to the age of 60 to replace those killed in vicious fighting in Ukraine.
Desperate to get more tank commanders, snipers and engineers, retired soldiers have been asked to join the Russian Army in two Siberian cities as an estimated 15,000 of Putin’s troops have died.
Russian media has reported that the Kremlin has called for former soldiers close to retirement to rejoin the military in Chelyabinsk and Tyumen as more tanks have been blown up by the Ukrainian army.
Already around 60,000 reservists, mainly from way outside Moscow, have been called to fight, according to The Times.
This is along with the young, between 18 and 27, inexperienced young conscripts, who serve for about a year, which now make up a quarter of Russia’s army.
Russia says it is not deploying conscripts in Ukraine, while a total of 134,500 new conscripts have been drafted, though it has acknowledged a small number were mistakenly sent to fight.
NATO thinks 15,000 Russian troops have died so far and Ukraine puts the death toll at 18,300.
A Ukrainian serviceman walks past destroyed Russian tanks not far from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on April 3
Mathieu Boulègue, a senior research fellow in Russian warfare at Chatham House, said: ‘Conscripts are used to drive a truck from point A to point B.
‘They are not destined for war-fighting operations . . . If they need someone to drive ammunition or medical supplies, that can be accomplished by a 60-year old.’
Mr Boulègue also wrote on the Defense Post that the Russian president’s approval, currently at 80%, rating is unlikely to change as Vladimir Putin seeks to end the war ‘on the cheap’.
He said: ‘With the internal audience in mind, the Russian defense ministry therefore falsely declared “mission accomplished” on March 25.
‘By announcing that “initial objectives” had been met, Russian forces can now arguably focus on “liberating” Donbas as a military priority.
‘Yet Putin is lying his way out of a bad situation. It is nothing more than fabricated state propaganda aimed at internal face-saving.’
Most of the new recruits are said to be from ethnic minorities such as the republics of Kalmykia, Ingushetia and Dagestan, Ukrainian intelligence claims, while the West points to Russia taking in forces from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway regions of Georgia.
Special Operations Forces destroyed a fuel tank the Russian Army needed, in an ambush, in April
Emily Ferris, a research fellow specialising in Russian affairs at the Royal United Services Institute, said Putin was relying on ethnic minorities because she says: ‘It doesn’t sit very well with most Russians to be engaging in urban warfare where you can see people you are battling are Slavic.
‘In a lot of cases, the Ukrainians have families in both countries and they look very similar [to the Russians]’
Hundreds of battle-hardened Syrian mercenaries are also signing up to join Russian forces on the promise of earning $1,000-a-month.
While military conscripts in the Russian-backed Donbas region in Ukraine have been according to Reuters sent into front-line combat against Ukrainian troops with no training, little food and water, and inadequate weapons.
The new accounts of untrained and ill-equipped conscripts being deployed are a fresh indication of how stretched the military resources at the Kremlin’s disposal are, over a month into a war that has seen Moscow’s forces hobbled by logistical problems and held up by fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Some Donbas conscripts were given the highly dangerous mission of drawing enemy fire onto themselves so other units could identify the Ukrainian positions and bomb them, according to video testimony from a prisoner of war published by Ukrainian forces.
A woman walks amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday
After being pushed to the front line near the port of Mariupol – scene of the heaviest fighting in the war – a group of about 135 Donbas conscripts laid down their arms and refused to fight on, according to Veronika, the partner of a conscript, who said her husband was among them
Asked to comment about the treatment and low morale of the Donbass draftees, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a question for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), the self-proclaimed separatist entity in Donbas.
The Russian defence ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
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