Russian President Vladimir Putin will this week meet with the mothers of reservist soldiers summoned to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, amid ongoing complaints of mobilization issues.
“Indeed, such a meeting is planned, we can confirm,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
“The president often holds such meetings, they are not all public. In any case, the president receives first-hand information about the real state of affairs.”
Peskov did not specify the precise date that Putin would be meeting the reservists mothers.
Some background: Putin provided an update to his increased military conscription order on November 7 and said that 50,000 of the recently drafted soldiers are now in Ukraine.
However, a long list of complaints has since emerged from the front lines, including a lack of leadership from mid-ranking officers, tactics that lead to heavy causalities, non-existent training and promised payments not received. Soldiers, their families and Russian military bloggers also reported logistical difficulties such as insufficient uniforms, poor food and a lack of medical supplies.
Some 300 mobilized Russians are being held in a basement in Zaitsevo in the Luhansk region for refusing to return to the front line, the Astra Telegram channel – a project of independent Russian journalists – reported, quoting their relatives.
One woman said her husband had told her: “New people are constantly brought in. They are in a large basement in the House of Culture in Zaitsevo. They feed them once a day: One dry ration to share between five to six people. They constantly threaten them.”
