8 Tuesday April 5 2022 | the times
News
Russia’s army is recruiting volunteers
up to the age of 60 after suffering heavy
losses during six weeks of fighting
across Ukraine.
The military wants former soldiers
nearing civilian retirement to rejoin in
Chelyabinsk and Tyumen, two Siber-
ian cities, according to Russian media.
Tank commanders, snipers and engi-
neers are among the positions the
Kremlin is particularly keen to fill.
Anyone who signs up will join an esti-
mated 60,000 reservists recently called
to active service, mainly drawn from
ethnic minorities and areas thousands
of miles away from Moscow, and the
drafting of 134,500 new conscripts.
About a quarter of the Russian army
is made up of conscripts, men between
the ages of 18 and 27 who typically serve
for one year. Defence experts said that
inexperienced teenagers sent to
Ukraine would be going to the “slaugh-
terhouse” and the Kremlin has prom-
ised not to send the new recruits to con-
flict “hot spots”.
The recruitment and conscription
drives comes amid Nato estimates that
up to 15,000 Russian troops may have
died so far in the war. The Ukrainian
defence ministry said that the death toll
could be as high as 18,300.
The republics of Kalmykia, Ingushet-
ia and Dagestan are among the regions
at the forefront of the Kremlin’s recruit-
ment drive to replace troops who have
Russia forced to
recruit dads’ army
as deaths mount
George Grylls been killed or injured, according to
Ukrainian intelligence. Kalmykia is a
predominantly Buddhist republic while
Ingushetia and Dagestan are over-
whelmingly Muslim.
Emily Ferris, a research fellow
specialising in Russian affairs at the
Royal United Services Institute, said
that Putin was relying disproportion-
ately on ethnic minorities to fight the
war. She said that Chechen forces had
already been deployed “at the coalface
of the violence”.
“It doesn’t sit very well with most
Russians to be engaging in urban war-
fare where you can see people you are
battling are Slavic. In a lot of cases, the
Ukrainians have families in both coun-
tries and they look very similar [to the
Russians],” she said.
In addition to drawing upon its re-
servists, western intelligence suggests
that Russia is redeploying some of its
existing forces from Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, two breakaway regions
of Georgia, to reinforce the invasion of
Ukraine.
“We don’t think this was planned, it’s
a very odd thing for the Russian mili-
tary to do. We suspect it is indicative of
problems in Ukraine,” one official said.
About 1,000 fighters from the Wag-
ner Group, the Russian paramilitary or-
ganisation, have already flown in from
Africa and the Middle East to help drive
the Ukrainian army out of Donbas.
The professionalism of the Russian
army has been called into question in
recent weeks amid reports that troops
have accidentally shot down their own
aircraft and empty vodka bottles have
been found littered across areas aban-
doned by the invading forces.
Footage shared on social media from
outside Moscow appears to show rusty
tanks being transported by train, while
a map discovered in Trostyanets, an
eastern town recently recaptured by
Ukraine, suggests some of the invading
troops are relying on navigation tech-
niques from the Second World War.
Defence analysts said that the mix-
ture of reservists, conscripts and volun-
teers being sent to Ukraine could fur-
ther limit the capabilities of the Russian
army, but added that the troops may
have been called upon primarily to re-
solve the logistical problems that have
dogged the invasion.
Mathieu Boulègue, a senior research
fellow in Russian warfare at Chatham
House, said that reservists could be
used in non-combat roles in Ukraine.
“Conscripts are used to drive a truck
from point A to point B. They are not
destined for war-fighting opera-
tions... If they need someone to drive
ammunition or medical supplies, that
can be accomplished by a 60-year old.”
Boulègue said the deployment of in-
experienced reservists to Ukraine was
unlikely to risk a backlash in Russia. He
said the Kremlin had weakened the
powers of non-governmental groups
such as the committee of soldiers’
mothers, to prevent anti-war protests.The Park Inn, where the Wagner
fighter was pictured, is owned by Radis-
son and until recently served as the offi-
ces of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, a UN-recog-
nised body.
British intelligence sources reported
last week that the Wagner Group had
been deployed to eastern Ukraine after
Russia’s regular army suffered heavy
losses.
More than 1,000 mercenaries were
thought to have arrived in the country,Kremlin-backed mercenaries em-
ployed by the Wagner Group have been
pictured for the first time in Ukraine
after defence officials warned that
more than 1,000 fighters had been de-
ployed.
Images circulated yesterday showed
a soldier from the shadowy private ar-
my standing in front of the Park Inn
hotel in Donetsk. He carries an AK-15,
an assault rifle used by Russian
special forces, and wears the
grinning skull of the Wagner
insignia on his uniform.
The photograph was pub-
lished by Semyon Pegov, a
pro-Kremlin war corre-
spondent, who has been em-
bedded with Russian forces in
Ukraine.
Wagner is a private militia run by
Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of President
Putin’s closest allies. It operates as an
arm’s-length branch of the state to offer
the Kremlin plausible deniability for
activities it does not want to be asso-
ciated with. Its motto is said to be:
“Death is our business and business is
good.”
“The GRU [Russian military intelli-
gence] use Wagner as their deniable
dirty operations troops,” said Philip In-
gram, a former British intelligence offi-
cer. The fact that they are using AK-15s,
the Spetsnaz’s new assault rifle, is a
clear indication that they are being
contracted and commanded by Rus-
sian special forces.”
Putin mercenaries active in Donetsk
along with senior commanders,
sources said.
“Russian forces are continuing to
consolidate and reorganise as they re-
focus their offensive into the Donbas
region in the east of Ukraine,” the Min-
istry of Defence said today. “Russian
troops, including mercenaries from the
Russian state-linked Wagner private
military company, are being moved in-
to the area.”
Moscow’s pretext for war on the basis
of “denazification” is undermined by
the presence of Wagner forces, owing
to the group’s long association with fas-
cist politics.
Dmitri Utkin, a senior Wagner com-
mander and former Spetsnaz officer, is
thought to be a neo-Nazi. Last year
images surfaced of a man purported to
be Utkin with Waffen-SS tattoos on his
shoulder and a Reichsadler Eagle tat-
too on his chest.
Prigozhin, 60, is often known as “Pu-
tin’s chef” because of his lucrative cater-
ing contracts with the Kremlin.
Wagner has been accused of perpe-
trating brutal atrocities carried out on
behalf of the Kremlin in the Middle
East and sub-Saharan Africa.
In January mercenaries from the
group were believed to have been in-
volved in a massacre of 300 civilians
near Bria, a town in the Central African
Republic.
Prigozhin is using the English courts
to sue Eliot Higgins, founder of the in-
vestigative website Bellingcat that has
revealed many of its shadowy opera-
tions.Tom Ball
Members of the Wagner private militia
can be identified by this insignianun by
Presidentssian
heNews War in Ukraine
A
Ukrainian
sniper
known
only as
“Charcoal”
has been heralded as a
national hero after she
returned to the front
line to help see off the
Russian invasion(George Grylls writes).
The mystery
sharpshooter, whose
real name has not
been revealed, was
introduced to the
world by the
Ukrainian armed
forces this week.
Charcoal, whoseface has been partially
covered up in photos
to protect her identity,
joined the Ukrainian
Marines in 2017.
The lethal
markswoman served
numerous tours in the
east of the country,
doing battle with
Kremlin-backed
separatists in the self-
proclaimed people’s
republics of Donetsk
and Luhansk.
In January she left
the Ukrainian armed
forces, but after a
month of civilian lifeSniper is lauded
as modern-day
Lady Death