Chaos surrounding Putin's partial mobilization: "Personal failure" and open anger in Russia's media

Created: 09/26/2022, 17:06

By: Franziska Schwarz

Call up, equip, train: According to US military experts, the partial mobilization for the Ukraine war in Russia is going haywire.

Moscow - His partial mobilization is apparently not going according to plan for Vladimir Putin.

The US think tank ISW attested the Kremlin chief “systemic problems” in its September 25 analysis.

The military experts currently see “confusion, disorganization and violations of the guidelines” in the call-up of the Russian armed forces for the Ukraine war. The reason is primarily “personal failure” by high-ranking military officers.

Putin's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had officially spoken of 300,000 reservists to be called up, with exceptions for old or physically handicapped people.

According to the ISW report, the federal districts are responsible for conducting conscription, while the Ministry of Defense sets the quotas and deadlines.

Vladimir Putin (left) and Sergei Shoigu (archive image) © Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP/dpa

Putin confronted with chaos in partial mobilization?

"Unfit" people drafted

However, an unnamed Russian source told the military experts that "unfit persons" had already been drafted.

Another insider told the ISW that military officials "excessively" sent out drafts without heeding Schoigu's guidelines.

Because: The military would apparently "act as if they were under pressure to carry out the partial mobilization as quickly as possible" instead of adhering to Schoigu's guidelines.

And the confusion over who is responsible makes it worse.

Many Russians are trying to leave the country because of the partial mobilization.

Criticism of recruitment also in Russia: "As if they had been sent from Kyiv"

Criticism of the approach to partial mobilization is now coming openly from Russia.

The head of the Kremlin Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said he had written to Shoigu asking him to "resolve the issues as a matter of urgency," and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan scolded Telegram that the summonses also went to 40-year-olds, albeit as the maximum age 35 years had been issued for privates.

This makes people "angry," she continued, and it "appears as if they had been sent from Kyiv," the Reuters news agency quoted her as saying.

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Russian military officials work more often for the federal districts than for the defense ministry directly, the ISW notes.

This could create a possible "gap" to the latter.

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Putin exchanges deputy defense ministers: an indication of "systemic problems"?

Most recently, Moscow's attack on Ukraine had revealed far-reaching logistical problems: a few days after the announced partial mobilization, Moscow replaced the previous Deputy Defense Minister Dmitri Bulgakov with General Mikhail Misintsev.

Shoigu apparently insists on his announced guidelines - while Putin seems to be urging haste, the conclusion of the military experts from the ISW "This indicates a possible rift between Shoigu and Putin."