Three weeks after Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, 600 Russian soldiers captured. ISW says they were inexperienced conscripts
About 600 Russian soldiers have been captured in the Kursk region within three weeks of the Ukrainian incursion, Kiev’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said.
Presumably, most of these POWs are conscripts: young and relatively inexperienced soldiers who thought they would serve a year’s compulsory military service and never see real combat. And they certainly didn’t expect the war to come to Russian soil.
Russia’s Inexperienced Conscripts
“Conscripts currently make up the bulk of the defense forces in the Kursk region,” explains Karolina Hird of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). “They are the ones who are captured, they are the ones who are surrounded. And this has been a vulnerability for Putin in terms of internal perception. And as long as he continues to demonstrate that he is not very interested in protecting conscripts in Kursk and using them as the main line of defense, I expect this will have a significant social impact in the future.”
Ivan Chuvilyaev of the Russian NGO Get Lost, which protects Russians trying to avoid conscription and escape the war, says that since the start of the Ukrainian incursion, hundreds of people have reached the border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.
“That’s why the regime of anti-terrorist operations was declared. Because it is this regime that allows the use of conscripts in the regions where it was declared,” says Chuvilyaev, who adds, however, that things changed when it was necessary to send more conscripts from the regions further away from the border. “Logistically, it takes longer to mobilize them.”
“That’s why,” continues the “Get Lost” volunteer, “the most used method today is not the temporary mission, but forcing the conscripts to sign a contract. It means that he (the conscript) not only goes to the Kursk region, but that after the Kursk region he will not return home. He will continue to participate in the fighting. It may be that he will remain stuck until the end of Putin’s life or until the end of the war. Or until the end of his own life.”
Russian conscription to begin again in October
The next Russian conscription will begin on October 1, and according to the law, new conscripts will have to have served for four months and have a military service specialty to participate in the anti-terrorist operation.
So those drafted in a month’s time shouldn’t be sent anywhere before February 2025. But, as happened with the conscripts in Kursk, they could see their first combat engagement even earlier.
This article is originally published on it.euronews.com
