Criticism grows louder over Russia’s chaotic troop mobilisation

The strongly pro-Kremlin editor of Russia’s state-run RT news channel has expressed anger that enlistment officers are sending call-up papers to the wrong men as frustration about the military mobilisation grows.

Russia’s first public mobilisation since World War II – needed to shore up its faltering Ukraine war – has triggered a rush for the border with hundreds of arrests and widespread unease among the population, Qazet.az reports.

The move has also attracted criticism from the Kremlin’s own supporters, something almost unheard of in Russia since the invasion began.

“It has been announced that privates can be recruited up to the age of 35. Summonses are going to 40-year-olds,” the RT editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, railed on her Telegram channel.

“They’re infuriating people as if on purpose, as if out of spite. As if they’d been sent by Kyiv.”

In another rare sign of turmoil, the defence ministry announced on Saturday the deputy minister in charge of logistics, General Dmitry Bulgakov, had been replaced “for transfer to another role” with Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, a longtime army official.