The Russian Federation mobilized 60,000 in the controlled territories of Ukraine

In the Russian-controlled territories of Ukraine, 55 to 60 thousand people were mobilized into the Russian army to participate in the war. Andrey Chernyak, representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said this in an interview with the “Donbass.Realii” program of the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty.

Judging by the context, this number does not include those mobilized in Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. First of all, we are talking about residents of the Russian-controlled districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. “Personally speaking, Russia does not consider the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions to be human beings, so the occupiers do not care, the laws do not apply,” Chernyak said.

Russia announced the annexation of these regions, as well as Zaporozhye and Kherson, in September last year (it does not fully control any of these regions). Mobilization in the so-called “DPR” and “LPR”, as the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are officially called in Russia, however, was announced back in February 2022, a few days before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, in contrast to Russia, where a “partial” mobilization was announced in September, there it was universal – according to numerous testimonies, any man of conscription age could be drafted into the armed detachments of the separatists. “This is a violent mobilization: the occupiers caught people on the street, they came to the few enterprises that were still working and forcibly took people away – they simply changed clothes and sent them to the front,” Andrey Chernyak said. According to him, students and students of technical schools were also taken to the front: “A man went to classes in the morning – and two days later he is already fighting.”

Chernyak does not specify how many people were drafted from February to September. After Russia announced the formal annexation of the Donbas regions, the so-called People’s Militia “DPR” and “LPR” were included in the Russian army. Mobilization was not announced in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, but so-called volunteer battalions are being formed there as part of the Russian army.

It is not even known the approximate number of dead residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine mobilized in the Russian army. Russian military bloggers and the separatists themselves admit that these losses are large, the number of killed is in the thousands.