Russia has bolstered the ranks of its army with conscripts from the occupied territories of Ukraine, according to Russian state media.
Recruits from the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were formally inducted at a ceremonial rally in Crimea last week, a Kremlin-controlled broadcaster reported, adding they will serve in occupied eastern Ukraine.
Exiled Ukrainian officials from Mariupol, a city in the occupied Donetsk region, also said in a statement on Telegram that locals had been enlisted to serve in Crimea and southern Russia for the first time.
Moscow has been accused of forcing Ukrainians to join its army and fight against their own country — a breach of international law — since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the Kremlin had singled out Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority in Ukraine, for conscription.
Russia has suffered heavy casualties throughout its grinding 1,000-day all-out war in Ukraine, with more than 600,000 dead or wounded, according to U.S. officials, and requires a steady stream of new recruits to maintain its offensive.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry last month slammed Russia’s mobilization campaign in the occupied regions and urged conscripts “to remember their lineage, their roots and not allow them to be mired in the crimes of the Kremlin regime.”
“We call on citizens of Ukraine in the temporarily occupied territories to avoid such ‘drafting’ at all costs, and … at the first opportunity to leave such units and return to the territory of Ukraine or leave for third countries,” the ministry said.
