Horror as reports Putin to order 1 million soldiers to fight

Russia: Mobilisation 'a humiliation' for Putin says Rifkind

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Russian President Vladimir President is preparing to call up one million Russian soldiers to fight in the war in Ukraine, a Russian newspaper has claimed. The report comes after military analysts identified a classified paragraph in Putin’s “partial-mobilisation” decree. In a televised address to the nation on Wednesday, the Russian President announced a partial-mobilisation of troops that would only apply to “citizens who are currently in the reserve, especially those who have served in the armed forces, have certain military professions and relevant experience”.

Shortly after Putin’s announcement, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said 300,000 Russians would be called up as part of the mobilisation that will apply to “those with previous military experience”.

He said “these are not people who’ve never seen or heard anything about the army” and stressed that students can “keep going to class”.

But defence analysts pointed out that paragraph seven of Putin’s decree was classified, likely obscuring the true number of soldiers who would be sent to Ukraine. 

Mark Voyger, a senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Analysis, told Express.co.uk: “We need to pay attention to the entirety of the text for Putin’s decree because paragraph seven is actually classified. 

“Usually, the Russian leadership leaves the last one or two items classified, they do not publish all the information openly.

“That’s been the case with previous such announcement, so they actually leave themselves some leeway, some opportunity to tweak those numbers.

“Therefore,  even though they’ve said it is going to be 300,000 people in this mobilisation, the classified paragraph may be hiding additional troops.”

“For certain, they are going to recruit at least this publicly announced number and of course, probably more.”

Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper operating in exile, seems to have confirmed these suspicions after quitting an unnamed official in Putin’s government as saying the real plan was to call up one million people.

The source confirmed speculation that the seventh paragraph contained additional troops to be deployed to Ukraine. 

Referring to the seventh paragraph the source said: “The figure was corrected several times, and in the end, they settled on a million.”

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