Andrey, a young car mechanic, was walking through the separatist-controlled town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine with his friend Elena in late March when a military recruiting officer stopped them. he put convocation papers in his hands.
One week later, Andrei, who had no military experience, was at the front fighting alongside Russian troops in Moscow’s confrontation with Ukraine. “I don’t know where he is now,” Elena said. “I don’t even know the unit number. I rarely called… Then there was no contact with him.”
Russia has not introduced mass mobilization of men of fighting age since invading Ukraine on February 24 because it has not officially declared war on its neighbor. But recruitment has been in place in Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatist enclaves, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in the southeastern Donbas region, since the start of what Moscow calls a “special military operation.” Before, only a few men were called up for military service, with many exempt.
According to some analysts, it seems that Russia depends heavily on the recruits of the separatist regions in the absence of its own full mobilization.
In recent weeks, separatist authorities have intensified the call, and residents say men with no military experience are regularly removed from the streets and sent immediately to the front. Climbing and rising casualty rates have begun to provoke anger even among pro-Russian communities.
Several videos posted online allegedly show wives of Donetsk and Luhansk recruits asking for help for their husbands and asking why men with no military background are sent to fight.
Russian troops are preparing for an operation in Donetsk. Their numbers are being increased by local recruits who are said to have no fighting experience © AP
“Weren’t people forced into military service, so how did they end up there?” A woman could be heard asking an official who had been intercepted by a group of women on the street. “There wasn’t even a medical check-up, they took patients!” says another.
At least one chat group in the Telegram messaging app shares tips on the location of mobile recruiting patrols so people can avoid them. Men advise each other to stay home as long as possible.
A mother living in Donetsk said in an interview that her son had initially avoided military recruitment because he had previously completed his military service.
“It wasn’t the kind of fight,” he said, recalling that he would say, “Mom, I can’t kill a person.” But in April, he said, he was picked up on the street, put on a bus, and taken to the recruiting office, just in time to call his mother and ask her to bring him some items. personal. “They took him to the recruiting office, changed his clothes, changed his shoes and took him to the base and then to the fight,” he said.
He was killed a few weeks later. “I think he probably didn’t kill anyone, in the end,” he added. “He didn’t have time.”
The center of the war has shifted to the eastern Donbas since Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine and Kyiv in April to focus on consolidating its occupation of the country’s southeast. Separatist forces have been heavily deployed.
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Russia seems to be looking for recruits from Donetsk and Luhansk to make up for some of its own staffing limitations, as it has not mobilized its own population, said Rob Lee, a senior member of the US Foreign Policy Research Institute. .
Russian President Vladimir Putin has portrayed the current stage of the war as a struggle for the “liberation” of the Donbass from the “Kyiv regime”. But the high level of casualties among Luhansk and Donetsk fighters could raise questions about Moscow’s motives, Lee said.
“It simply came to our notice then [the breakaway regions] are they at high risk of achieving a Russian foreign policy goal at their own expense? He said.
At least two videos have appeared that appear to show separatist military units addressing their leaders and refusing to fight. The videos show the apparent commanders blaming their reluctance on the fact that many troops are inexperienced recruits, although the Financial Times was unable to confirm the veracity of the images.
“More than 90 percent of the people here have not fought at all… It was the first time they saw a Kalashnikov,” says an apparent leader of the Donetsk unit.
“For three months we lived like vagrants with machine guns, and now they want to throw us back into the meat grinder,” he added, insisting that he and more than 200 other soldiers refused to “go to the slaughter.”
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Russia has tried to minimize the amount of public information about casualties among its own troops in Ukraine. The regional media had previously published details of the victims in their own communities. But last week, a Russian court ruled that revealing any information about the country’s military casualties, including the names and personal details of soldiers killed in battle, would be considered illegal.
The Russian Defense Ministry last announced a number of deaths in late March. At the time, the official figure was 1,351, but local activists, who said they had maintained an independent account, maintained the actual number was at least two and a half times higher. The UK Ministry of Defense puts the current figure at 20,000.
The death toll in Donetsk and Luhansk is still unclear. “For me, the fate of these people is the most tragic,” said one activist, who asked to remain anonymous. “No one remembers [officially] nobody counts them at all ”.
In various social media groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, relatives have been forced to search for information about the missing, sharing photos and details of the identifying features. From time to time, handwritten lists with the names of wounded soldiers in hospitals are published.
Posts contain creepy comments. “He’s dead… I served him,” a man wrote under a photo of a missing Donetsk fighter posted by his sister.
“Everyone is called, we will be left without a future,” someone wrote under the memorial message of a former karate teacher killed last week. “Teachers, sports coaches, tractor drivers are dying,” wrote another. “What will our future be like? Rest in peace.”
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