Russia Monitor is a review of the most important events related to Russian internal and external security, as well as its foreign policies.
Date: 20 October 2022 Author: Grzegorz Kuczyński
Russia Suspends Partial Mobilization
Russia would fail to complete two tasks, by going ahead with the “partial mobilization” and drafting new conscripts later this fall. Thus, the mobilization was suspended temporarily. A total of 420,000 people were drafted over one month.
Army draft offices closed in Moscow on October 17 at 2:00 p.m., according to city officials. Whether the Kremlin’s quotas for recruiting 16,000 reservists in Moscow to fight in Ukraine have been met in the capital remains unknown. This number is modest if to compare the number of reservists and that of potential soldiers. Russia’s mobilization focused essentially on ethnic minorities as remote non-Russian regions traditionally produce more troops. Shortly after, the Moscow region reached its draft quotas. But as in other Russian regions, mobilization drives that ended might be easily resumed upon a defense ministry order. In some regions across Russia that reached draft quotas, army draft offices were asked to add more soldiers. The one who might announce the end of mobilization is Vladimir Putin, who had declared it nationwide. The Russian leader said on October 14 that 222,000 people out of a target of 300,000 had already been mobilized, promising to complete the drive by the end of this month. As Putin signed a decree that postponed Russia’s routine fall conscription to November 1, a suspended mobilization campaign means army draft offices would be unable to engage reservists and troops at the same time. Putin’s “partial mobilization” could be resumed at any time, though. The decree is open-ended, not specifying an end date for the mobilization. As long as a new decree is not adopted, Russia’s partial mobilization is suspended, and not completed. A suspended mobilization campaign gives some time to fix the way how reservists are called up, trained, and sent to Ukraine. In a nutshell, Moscow seeks to fix some shortcomings in its mobilization system. Through the nationwide mobilization, Russian officials somewhat tested the system in practice. Russia has not seen any mobilization since the Great Patriotic War. Now it is pushing back the enlistment of 120,000 conscripts this fall. Russian troops are generally prohibited from being deployed abroad. But as Russia annexed the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson, Moscow considers them all Russian territory, now eligible to dispatch troops.
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