Russia mobilises 300,000 reservists

Russia said yesterday that 300,000 reservists have been called up, with Moscow fighting to turn the tide after defeats in Ukraine have left the key southern city of Kherson in Kyiv’s sights.The announcement of the draft’s completion came as Moscow’s proxies said they had finished a pull-out of civilians from Kherson, which Ukrainian forces were pushing to recapture as winter closes in.The city, which had a population of 288,000 before the fighting, was one of the first to fall to Moscow’s troops in the early days of the February offensive and retaking it would mark a major milestone for Kyiv.Faced with military losses, President Vladimir Putin announced a military call-up of reservists in September, seeking to mobilise 300,000 people amid fighting in Ukraine.Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin yesterday in a televised meeting that the call-up – which saw Russian men dashing for the borders to avoid the fighting – had hit its target.According to Shoigu, 82,000 recruits were already in Ukraine with 41,000 of them deployed to military units.Putin thanked reservists “for their dedication to duty, for their patriotism, for their firm determination to defend our country, to defend Russia, which means their home, their family, our citizens, our people”.After making major gains in Ukraine’s east and south, Kyiv’s forces were preparing for a fierce battle to retake the main city in the southern Kherson region.Since mid-October the occupation authorities have urged Kherson residents to cross to the left bank of the Dnipro River, deeper into Moscow-controlled territory and closer to regions of southern Russia.As of yesterday, the movement of residents – which Kyiv has compared to Soviet-like “deportations” – was complete.“The work to organise residents leaving to the left bank of the Dnipro (river) to safe regions of Russia is completed,” Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, said on social media late on Thursday.“The crossing (of the Dnipro) is empty!” he said after he visited the region with the Kremlin’s domestic chief Sergei Kiriyenko.He posted photos of himself and other officials, including Kiriyenko, on a riverbank.A Russian-installed official in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, has said that at least 70,000 people have left their homes in the region in the space of a week.Kyiv’s army, meanwhile, said yesterday that Moscow’s “so-called evacuation” is continuing.It claimed that the Russian command in Kherson was trying to “hide the real losses of servicemen” to “avoid panic”.In a sign of Moscow suffering heavy losses, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said late on Thursday that 23 of his fighters were killed in battles around Kherson this week with dozens more wounded.“At the beginning of this week, one of the Chechen units was shelled in the Kherson region,” Kadyrov, who has sent his militia to fight alongside the Kremlin’s forces, said on Telegram.The Kremlin ally rarely reveals defeats but admitted that losses were “big on that day”.Russian forces have for weeks pummelled Ukraine with air strikes especially targeting energy infrastructure, destroying at least a third of the country’s power facilities ahead of winter.Kyiv says the strikes intended to freeze Ukrainians in winter are an intentional war crime.Moscow says it is permitted as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks including a blast on a bridge to Crimea.