Russia facing 'major challenges' over 300,000 recruit target, says west
Dan Sabbagh
This is from Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor:
Western officials believe that Russia “will face major challenges” to mobilise 300,000 more people to its armed forces and that the country’s military will struggle to train and equip any new recruits unless the Kremlin waits several months before deploying them on the front line in Ukraine.
The intelligence experts acknowledged that the true recruitment target could be higher, but although some reports have suggested the Kremlin’s real goal is to mobilise 1million, the officials reiterated in a briefing on Friday that it was their belief it will be very hard for Russia to reach 300,000, never mind any larger figure.
When pressed, one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 300,000 was “an immense number of people to then try to get in any sense of semblance to be able to fight in Ukraine”. The official added: “The authorities will face major challenges even in mustering this number of personnel.”
Russia has faced problems with training and equipment throughout the conflict so far, and the officials said that would almost certainly extend to newly pressed recruits. “We think that they will be very challenged in training, let alone equipping such a large force quickly,” the official said. Recruits will likely be issued “old stuff and unreliable equipment,” they said.
Western officials believe there was a clear regional bias in Russian recruitment, focusing on poor and minority areas in the country’s east - and avoiding the country’s middle class urban centres. “We are not as yet seeing at the moment, recruiting teams in St. Petersburg or Moscow,” an official said.
Western officials are not keen to engage particularly with recent nuclear threats issued by Vladimir Putin, but they did say they believed that it was not necessarily the case that any Ukrainian territory annexed in the coming days through so-called referendums and weeks would be deemed as covered by its nuclear umbrella.
“Russian red lines are not necessarily where they say they are,” the official said, and that “there are parts of the territory that Russia now controls which are of greater strategic significance to Moscow than others”. Although the locations were not spelled out, the Kremlin has long placed a high value on Crimea as well as the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces occupied since 2014.
It’s nearly 11pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
The United States is prepared to impose additional economic costs on Russia in conjunction with American allies if Russia moves forward with Ukraine annexation, the White House announced Friday. Russia has been planning what the US has described as sham referendums in portions of eastern Ukraine in what is seen as a step toward annexing these territories.
Finnish ministers on Friday evening announced that the government will prohibit Russian tourists from crossing its borders over the next few days. “The aspiration and purpose is to significantly reduce the number of people coming to Finland from Russia,” president Sauli Niinistö told state broadcaster Yle.
Russia will continue its communication with the United Nations about a deal to export grain from Ukrainian ports, but says concrete results are needed, Tass news agency cited a senior official as saying on Friday. It also cited deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin as saying Russia had a positive assessment of the UN’s efforts to resume the export of Russian fertilizers.
Ukraine said on Friday it had shot down four Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones used by Russia’s armed forces, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to complain that Tehran was harming Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine and the United States have accused Iran of supplying drones to Russia, something Tehran has denied. Zelenskiy has asked his foreign ministry to respond to the use of Iranian equipment, spokesman Serhii Nykyforov said.
The United States is prepared to impose additional economic costs on Russia in conjunction with American allies if Russia moves forward with Ukraine annexation, the White House announced Friday.
Russia has been planning what the US has described as sham referendums in portions of eastern Ukraine in what is seen as a step toward annexing these territories.
“We know that these referenda will be manipulated,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Reuters reports.
Finland will close its borders to Russian tourists after Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a mobilization order earlier this week.
Finnish ministers on Friday evening announced that the government will prohibit Russian tourists from crossing its borders over the next few days.
“The aspiration and purpose is to significantly reduce the number of people coming to Finland from Russia,” president Sauli Niinistö told state broadcaster Yle, the Financial Times reports.
The decision comes after traffic at Russian border crossings with Finland surged after the mobilisation order sparked fears that men of fighting age in Russia would be ordered to the frontlines of the Ukrainian war.
In recent weeks, Finland has come under enormous pressure from its EU neighbors after it refused to follow suit in the paths of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in banning Russian tourists from entering their borders.
Russia will continue its communication with the United Nations about a deal to export grain from Ukrainian ports, but says concrete results are needed, Tass news agency cited a senior official as saying on Friday.
It also cited deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin as saying Russia had a positive assessment of the UN’s efforts to resume the export of Russian fertilizers.
The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and UN secretary general Antonio Guterres “discussed in detail the implementation of the Istanbul agreements on exports of Ukrainian foodstuffs from Black Sea ports and on unimpeded exports of Russian agricultural products and fertilizers.”
The statement added that Russia and the UN reaffirmed “mutual commitment to preserve the central coordinating role of the international organization.”
Ukraine said on Friday it had shot down four Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones used by Russia’s armed forces, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to complain that Tehran was harming Ukrainian citizens, Reuters reports.
Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine said that they had shot down the Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles over the sea near the Odesa port.
Ukraine and the United States have accused Iran of supplying drones to Russia, something Tehran has denied. Zelenskiy has asked his foreign ministry to respond to the use of Iranian equipment, spokesman Serhii Nykyforov said.
“Such actions by Iran are considered as steps against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and also against the lives and well being of Ukrainian citizens,” he said in a statement.
Military experts say the drones would be useful to Russia for both reconnaissance and as loitering munitions that can bide their time in locating and engaging suitable targets.
On Friday, a video posted online by an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces showed another long-range drone, the Mohajer-6, shot down by Ukrainian forces and afloat in the sea.
Уперше в Україні зенітниками повітряного командування "Південь" Повітряних Сил ЗС України збито багатоцільовий ударний БпЛА іранського виробництва “Mohajer-6” (Мохаджер-6). 🔥Telegram - https://t.co/GLExONwd4upic.twitter.com/iruEiqOtcr
Long lines of vehicles continue to form at Russia’s border crossings on the second day full day of Vladimir Putin’s military mobilisation. The Russian president’s decision to announce the first mobilisation since the second world war has led to a rush among men of military age to leave the country, with some men waiting over 24 hours or resorting to using bicycles and scooters to skip the miles-long queue of traffic jams. Traffic into Finland across its south-eastern border with Russia continues to be busy, the Finnish border force said.
The Finnish government has announced it will “significantly restrict the entry of Russian citizens” after the country saw a boom in Russian travellers over its eastern border following Vladimir Putin’s mobilisation orders. Finland will now restrict new visas, the government said in a statement, citing “serious damage to Finland’s international position”.
It comes as thousands of men across Russia have been handed draft papers after the mobilisation announcement. Among those called up since Putin’s announcement on Wednesday were Russians detained while protesting against the mobilisation, the independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said.
Ukraine’s armed forces said it has liberated another settlement in the Donetsk region and improved their positions around the eastern town of Bakhmut. The village of Yatskivka in Donetsk region is now in Ukrainian hands, according to Oleksii Hromov, deputy head of the operations directorate of the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces.
The governor of the Kharkiv region Oleh Synyehubov has said 436 bodies have been exhumed from a mass burial site in the eastern city of Izium. Thirty of the bodies bore visible signs of torture in the burial site in Kharkiv, a region held largely by Russian forces before a Ukrainian counteroffensive this month, Synyehubov told reporters, adding that three more grave sites have been located in areas retaken by Ukraine.
The UN has said its investigators have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture and horrific sexual violence. The team of three independent experts had launched initial investigations looking at the areas of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions where they were “struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited”, and the frequent “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats”.
So-called “referendums” are under way in areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops, with residents told to vote on proposals for the four Ukrainian regions to declare independence and then join Russia. The polls in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces are due to run until Tuesday and appear to be a thin attempt to provide cover for illegal annexation of the regions by Moscow.
Ukrainians living in areas occupied by Russian troops are being forced to vote in “referendums” organised by pro-Moscow authorities, according to Ukrainian officials. Some residents are ignoring the “referendums”, Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian defence intelligence official, told CNN. Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) has claimed the Russian-backed separatist-held so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) planned to allow teenagers under the age of 18 to cast their votes.
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected”. The meeting between Wang and Kuleba took place on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York, and was the first since Russia invaded Ukraine. Kuleba said Wang had “reaffirmed China’s respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
The Group of Seven (G7) countries said they will never recognise Russia’s “sham” referendums in a joint statement.
“Referendums” held in four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine were an attempt by Moscow to create a “phony” pretext for changing the status of Ukrainian sovereign territory, the statement said.
G7 leaders said:
We will never recognise these referenda which appear to be step toward Russian annexation and we will never recognise purported annexation if it occurs.
Russian men are beginning to be drafted into the army to help Russia’s war with Ukraine after Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation on Tuesday.
The Russian president claimed the mobilisation would involve drafting 300,000 men who had previous combat experience, although reports suggest drafts have been sent to students and people with no prior military training.
Families say goodbye to men drafted into Putin's war – video
Ukrainians living in areas occupied by Russian troops are being forced to vote in “referendums” organised by pro-Moscow authorities, according to Ukrainian officials.
Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian defence intelligence official, told CNN:
There is no referendum as such. It is imitation. Local residents are ignoring it. Some people are simply forced to vote. There were buses of people brought it from Crimea to cast ballots.
Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) has said it obtained copies of documents showing that the Russian-backed separatist-held so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) planned to allow teenagers under the age of 18 to cast their votes in the “referendum”.
The SBU report said:
The invaders hope to expand the ‘electoral base’ supporting the accession of the eastern part of Ukraine to the Russian Federation and involve local residents aged 13 to 17 in pseudo-voting.
Sped-up footage appears to show long lines of vehicles at a checkpoint on the Russia-Georgia border, a popular route used by Russians to leave the country.
Vladimir Putin’s decision to announce the first mobilisation since the second world war has led to a rush among men of military age to leave Russia.
Usually sleepy border crossings into Kazakhstan and Mongolia have also been overwhelmed by the sudden influx of Russians looking for a way out.
Footage appears to show cars queueing to leave Russia at Georgia border – video
