She had at the time caused the panicked exile of hundreds of thousands of young men. In Russia, the “partial mobilization” decreed on September 21 by Vladimir Putin is officially over, without the Russian population being reassured.
It had started two months ago in confusion, without really knowing who could be mobilized and who was not, how many people were potentially concerned and who would be exempt. Today, the “partial mobilization” is coming to an end in the same impression of total vagueness.
At the end of October, the Ministry of Defense had already announced the end of mobilization. But it quickly turned out that in fact, many Russian men continued to be summoned to the “voïenkomat”, the army recruitment offices. The Kremlin spokesman then put this on the back of “ inertia of the bureaucratic machine, reminds our journalist Leo Vidal-Giraud.
This Friday, on the sidelines of Russian National Day celebrations, Vladimir Putin said that 318,000 people had already been mobilized. More than the official target of 300,000, thanks to an influx of volunteers at recruitment offices, he said. But this is much less than the actual number of conscripts, say several Russian NGOs, which count nearly 500,000. military service which is soon to begin in Russia.
While a hundred mobilized have already been killed in Ukraine, for these NGOs, the watchword remains the same: never respond to summonses, do not go to the “voïenkomat”.