Russia announces the mobilisation campaign in Ukraine is over, and the US sends more weapons
In a polarising mobilisation effort that was it’s first since World War Two, Russia said on Friday that it had finished calling up reservists to fight in Ukraine after drawing hundreds of thousands in a month and dispatching more than a quarter of them to the front lines.
While this was going on, the United States declared it would send Ukraine an additional $275 million in military aid, including weapons, ammunition, and gear from the Pentagon’s stockpiles, bringing the total amount of military aid provided to Ukraine under the Biden administration to more than $18.5 billion.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Washington is striving to give Ukraine the necessary air defence capabilities, with the first two highly advanced anti-aircraft NASAMS systems scheduled to arrive in the nation next month.
He claimed that to permit the supply of their air defence systems to Ukraine, the United States was also collaborating with allies and partners.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, expressed doubt that Moscow had called up all of its troops.
He claimed that the Russian military “are so badly trained and equipped, so cruelly used by their command, that it permits us to infer that very soon Russia may need to deploy a fresh wave of people to the war.” in his nightly televised address.
Tens of thousands of men have fled the country as a result of the controversial mobilisation push, which also gave rise to the first long-lasting public protests against the war.
“You had to mobilise 300,000 people, and that has been done. No additional actions are anticipated, “President Vladimir Putin was informed by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu during a live meeting in the Kremlin. He claimed that 82,000 people had already been deployed to the area of conflict and the remaining people were in training.
For their “dedication to duty, patriotism, and unwavering commitment to defend our country, to defend Russia, which means their home, their family, our compatriots, and our people,” Putin commended the reserve personnel.
Both men said there were “issues” at the beginning of the call-up. Initial problems with providing newly mobilised troops, according to Shoigu, have since been rectified. Putin stated that while mistakes had likely been expected given how long it had been since Russia had mobilised, lessons had been learned.
The majority of Russians saw a direct personal impact from the “special military operation” Putin initiated in February for the first time with the mobilisation he ordered last month after his soldiers suffered significant battlefield reverses.
More than 2,000 individuals were detained during anti-mobilization demonstrations, particularly in regions of Russia where ethnic minorities were present. These groups claimed they were unfairly singled out for deployment to the front.
When he approved the plans to annexe Ukrainian areas, Putin ordered the call-up. The West portrays those actions as an escalation in response to failures on the battlefield that demonstrated Russia was likely to lose the conflict.
According to Western military observers, the call-up could help Moscow fill manpower gaps along the front line’s 1,000 km (600 miles), but the draft’s military effectiveness will depend on whether Moscow can adequately equip and train the reservists.
In the meantime, Kyiv has kept advancing. Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of the Ukrainian region of Luhansk, declared on Friday that Ukrainian forces had essentially taken complete control of a crucial route that linked Svatove and Kreminna, two significant cities considered to be the next major battlefront in the east. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the assertion.
The largest city that Russia has successfully held intact since its invasion in February is Kherson, which Ukrainian forces have advanced toward this month in the south. Moscow, which has had authority over land routes to Crimea since 2014, is located at the mouth of the broad Dnipro River, which divides Ukraine in half.
However, the Ukrainian advance seems to have stalled recently, and Kyiv attributes this to bad weather and difficult terrain. North of the city, soldiers positioned in muddy trench lines traded artillery, rocket, and mortar fire.
Less than a kilometre away, Ukrainian soldiers operating a 120 mm mortar concealed in bushes blasted Russian positions near a grain silo with high explosive rounds in thunderous bursts of flame.
The Russians were utilising the silo for cover and observation, according to Hennadyi, 51. It protruded like a finger above a large field area, with a smoke column trailing behind it.
Hennadyi claimed that due to the structure’s significance to the surrounding agricultural area, Ukrainian gunners were concentrating their fire on Russian armoured vehicles and ammunition hidden behind the silo. But he said that they lacked sufficient shells.
On the west bank of the Dnipro, where Kherson city is located, Russia occupies a small area, and it has ordered all civilians to leave. Kyiv claims the evacuation is a pretext for Russian forces to transfer residents forcibly; Moscow disputes this.
Before Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive, Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of Crimea, claimed that work on relocating citizens who were trying to leave Kherson to regions of Russia had been finished.
According to the general staff of Ukraine, additional Russian personnel were being stationed in empty residences while medical and commercial equipment was being taken from the region.
Putin’s escalation in recent weeks has also included a new campaign to bombard Ukrainian civil infrastructure targets, mainly electrical substations, with missiles and suicide drones produced in Iran.
According to Kyiv, the strikes constitute a premeditated war crime and are meant to freeze Ukrainians in the winter. According to Moscow, retribution for Ukrainian acts, including the explosion on a bridge leading to Crimea, is permissible.
