A total of 300,000 reservists will be called up to fight in the Ukraine conflict, the Russian defense minister has said
Russia will call on 300,000 reservists to serve in the conflict with Ukraine, under a partial nationwide mobilization, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced on Wednesday, adding that Moscow has “an immense mobilization resource.”
According to Shoigu, the mobilization will apply neither to university students, nor conscripts. The minister stressed that only those who have already served in the military will be called up.
“Those are not people who have never heard anything about the army. Those are those who, firstly, had completed their military service, secondly, those who have a military specialty… and have military experience,” he noted.
Shoigu also stressed that Russia possesses an immense mobilization capability and could summon almost 25 million people with some military experience. “So one could say that this partial mobilization is just 1%, or a bit more” of the total number of people that could be mobilized, he added.
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The defense minister noted that the line of contact between Moscow and Ukraine’s forces is more than 1,000 km long, and the mobilization would be used for defending it.
“It is natural that this line should be reinforced and those territories (held by Russia) should be controlled. Of course, this is the purpose of this work,” he said, referring to the mobilization effort.
