Moscow: Russian authorities promised to fix the mistakes in their troop call-up for Ukraine, after some public outrage over students, older or sick people being mistakenly ordered to report for duty.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation on Wednesday, he said only people with “relevant” skills or military experience would be concerned.
But many expressed outrage after seeing — sometimes absurd — cases of authorities summoning people unfit for service.
Upper house speaker Valentina Matviyenko called on all governors — who oversee the mobilisation campaigns — to avoid mistakes, in a rare admission.
“Incorrect cases of mobilisation… are provoking fierce reactions in society, and rightly so,” Ms Matviyenko said in a statement on Telegram.
“Some are assuming that handing in their report (to their superiors) quickly is more important than correctly fulfilling this important mission,” she added.
“This is unacceptable… Make sure that partial mobilisation is carried out in full and complete compliance with the criteria. And without a single mistake!” she ordered.
The governor of the northwestern Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko told local districts heads to “take the residents’ appeals under your personal control and deal with each single case,” according to a statement on his administration’s website Sunday.
The Vladimir region governor Vladimir Avdeev already said Saturday that “anyone mobilised by mistake will return home.”
The errors are painted as isolated cases.
But the very fact that Russian authorities are talking about them point to concerns about the level of indignation coming from some of the population.
