Retired Russian colonel Viktor Murakhovsky said in comments to the Moscow-based online news channel RBC that the Kremlin will likely try to keep relying on volunteers, predicting that this will account for most of the increase .
Another Russian military expert, Alexei Leonkov, noted that training in complex modern weapons typically takes three years. And inmates only serve one year.
A railway worker stands next to a badly damaged train after a Russian attack on a train station. Credit: A
“A draft will not help this, so there will be no increase in the number of recruits,” state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Leonkov as saying.
Fears of a Chernobyl-like disaster have been rising in Ukraine due to fighting around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of bombing the site.
The line damaged in Thursday’s incident apparently produced electricity going out, without affecting a separate line used to power the plant’s vital reactor cooling systems.
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The Russian-based regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, claimed on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian forces had attacked, sparking the fire that damaged transmission lines. Ukraine’s nuclear power agency, Energoatom, blamed “the actions of the invaders”.
Although the incident apparently did not affect the reactors’ cooling systems, the loss of which could lead to a meltdown, it stoked fears of disaster.
Elsewhere on the battlefront, the deadly attack on the train station in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, came as Ukraine braced for attacks linked to the national holiday and to the six months of the war, both. fell on wednesday
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, did not say whether the 25 people killed were civilians. If they were, it would be one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks. Thirty-one people were injured.
Witnesses said some of the victims, including at least one child, were burned to death in passing train cars or automobiles.
“Everything crumbled to dust,” said Olena Budnyk, a 65-year-old Chaplyne resident. “There was a dust storm. We couldn’t see anything. We didn’t know where to run.”
The dead included an 11-year-old boy found under the rubble of a house and a 6-year-old boy who died in a car fire near the train station, authorities said.
Russia’s defense ministry said its forces used an Iskander missile to attack a military train carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment on the front line in eastern Ukraine. The ministry claimed that more than 200 reservists “were destroyed on their way to the combat zone”.
The attack served as a painful reminder of Russia’s continued ability to inflict suffering on a large scale. Wednesday’s national holiday celebrated Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
Tetyana Kvitnytska, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, said those injured in the attack on the train station suffered head injuries, broken limbs, burns and shrapnel wounds.
After the attacks in which civilians were killed, the Russian government has repeatedly asserted that its forces are only targeting legitimate military targets. Hours before the bloodshed at the train station, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu insisted the military was doing everything it could to save civilians, even at the cost of slowing its offensive in Ukraine .
AP
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