Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu said that those who have combat experience and a military specialty will be drafted into the army from the reserve. According to him, the mobilization resource in Russia is 25 million people, and now they are allegedly planning to call up 300 thousand "reservists", which, according to Shoigu's calculations, is just over 1% of the mobilization resource. The call must be provided by the governors of the Russian regions. The number of people from each region will be determined by the Ministry of Defense.
Shoigu, apparently, made a mistake in terminology, says Valentina Melnikova, executive secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia. “Comrade Minister of Defense is confused in terminology, because reservists are those who are in the mobilization reserve, they are paid, they are trained and so on. It is not known how many of them, but the subpoenas are sent by fan, judging by what the lawyers send. Therefore, there is no talk of any reservists, ”she explained to The Insider.
“He is not a military man himself, and, apparently, that is why he is talking about reservists. In fact, they mean storekeepers – for example, those who recently served under a contract, ”said the human rights activist.
Independent military expert Ivan Karpov, like Melnikova, believes that when speaking about reservists, Shoigu meant those who are in reserve. In the USSR, this category was called "mobilization reserve". But these are not "reservists" in the modern sense. The state guarantees appropriate payments to the reservists. For 30 days at military training, officers receive from 30 to 75 thousand rubles, military personnel in ordinary positions – up to 25 thousand rubles. Among these reservists are participants in the BARS program (special combat army reserve). In August of this year, it became known that last year the Ministry of Defense conducted exercises on the border with Ukraine with the participation of 38,000 BARS reservists. However, no more than 8,000 people agreed to fight in Ukraine – 20 battalions of 400 people each.
Karpov also told The Insider that there were approximately 450,000 contract servicemen in Russia last year. On average, each of them signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense for two years. Based on these calculations, approximately every year 200,000 complete a contract and go into the reserve. Consequently, in Russia there are now more than half a million people who have quit in the last three years, the expert concluded.
According to Karpov, logistics specialists will be among the first to be called to the front. Their tasks include organizing the supply of troops to maintain their combat capability in peacetime and wartime. In particular, the timely delivery of food, uniforms, weapons and ammunition, fuel, medicines, etc. Logistics officers are also responsible for logistics: the use of vehicles of a unit or unit for the transport of goods, the development of optimal routes and interaction with other units.
Director of the human rights group “Citizen. Army. Right” Sergey Krivenko, in a conversation with The Insider, noted that there are no conditions for mobilization in the decree of Vladimir Putin. It does not say who and in what quantity will be called. “Therefore, what Shoigu says can be changed at any moment,” he said.
Krivenko advises "avoid mobilization by all possible means, try not to receive subpoenas, write a statement refusing to mobilize on the basis of anti-war convictions." He also added that subpoenas in mailboxes can be ignored (because they cannot be acknowledged).
According to Melnikova, "there is no picture of qualified mobilization yet." “Summons should be sent out with precision. And some smart military commissars of the subjects of the federation should have an electronic file cabinet. Comrade Burdinsky [Chief of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate of the General Staff Yevgeny Burdinsky] should also have this card file, and comrade colonels who are responsible for the regions should get people from this card file so that they are called in,” Melnikova explained. But so far, she says, “the structure is not ready for such individual things.” “We demanded from them in 1989 that all lists be on computers, that there be a selection based on any data, but, apparently, this still does not exist,” the human rights activist noted.
