As part of mobilization in 2022, 300,000 people were called up, of whom about 244,000 are still in the combat zone, and 41,000 have been dismissed from service due to reaching the age limit, for health or other reasons, Vladimir Putin said during the Direct Line.
The difference in the voiced figures is 15,000 people who are not at the front, but at the same time not dismissed. Probably, we are talking about the dead mobilized, the number of which the Russian authorities do not officially disclose.
By October 2023, the BBC Russian Service, in a joint study with Mediazona, managed to confirm the deaths of 4,029 mobilized people (total confirmed losses of Russian troops, according to their data – 34,412 people).
A total of 617,000 Russian military personnel are now at the front, Putin said. That is, almost 40% of the participants in military operations are mobilized. “President” promised that there will not be a second wave of mobilization in Russia, because enough volunteers are recruited into the army (at the moment – 486,000 people). However, even before the first wave of mobilization, which began in September 2022, Putin repeatedly promised that the authorities would not mobilize the population and would not draft people from the reserve.
On the eve of the Direct Line, relatives of the mobilized called on the organizers of the “president’s” press conference to “flood” them with questions about the demobilization of their loved ones. Text messages from Russians were broadcast on the screen in the hall where the Direct Line was held, and among them were the questions: “When will the mobilized be released? Why do 300,000 people have to serve for the whole country? When will peace talks begin?”. The broadcast did not comment in any way on what was being aired on the screen.
According to the U.S. intelligence, by early December 2023, the losses of the Russian army in Ukraine, including killed and wounded, reached 315 thousand people. This is 90% of the personnel of the army, which the Kremlin has assembled for the start of the invasion in February 2022. U.S. intelligence estimated its strength at 360,000 soldiers.
