Russians criticize Kremlin for deaths of new recruits in Ukraine

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Some 222,000 Russians already have been drafted and 16,000 of them have been deployed in units that get involved in fulfilling combat tasks, Putin told a news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, adding that he expects the mobilization to be completed within two weeks.

When Putin announced a partial mobilization in September, he said that servicemen called up for active duty would undergo mandatory additional military training. The Russian government said that such training could take up to one month.

Russian media has reported at least seven deaths among people who were recently drafted. Asked Friday why some mobilized servicemen had died so soon after mobilization began, Putin said that in some cases training could take just 10 days.

The contact line is 1,100 kilometers long; it was not possible to keep it up with contract soldiers alone, Putin said. All mobilized citizens must be trained.

When asked if he had any regrets about the war, Putin said no.

We would get the same situation in worse conditions, he said. My actions were timely and right.

Nevertheless, in late September, Putin acknowledged there had been mistakes in how the Russian government had been carrying out his draft. He described cases of people entitled to deferments being wrongly drafted, such as fathers of many children, men with chronic diseases, or those above military age.

The deaths of recent recruits have been reported by local news websites and activists across the country from St. Petersburg in the northwest to Chelyabinsk in the Urals. Russias Defense Ministry does not regularly provide casualty tolls.

Roman Saponkov, a Russian military blogger, responded to the reports of recent deaths by saying Thursday that the mobilization should have been declared six months earlier, because now the countrys military command is under pressure to deploy troops to the front lines as soon as possible to help repel Ukraines recent battlefield advances.

Thats why we will see many deaths among the mobilized, he said in his blog. Today they are superheroes who were thrown to rescue the situation at the last moment.

Hawkish commentators criticized the initial rollout of the draft, with one popular pro-war blogger on Telegram, Rybar, saying they received huge numbers of stories of people with health problems or without combat experience getting draft notices.

As reports of the deaths in Ukraine filtered in this week, one Russian military blogger, who goes by the name Gray Zone and claims to be linked to the Russian mercenary community, said that the mobilization continues to be chaotic and that no lessons had been learned from the initial wave of criticism.

Russian military bloggers are an increasingly vocal and influential group of journalists and activists that support the Kremlins decision to invade Ukraine, but have castigated the countrys Defense Ministry and other authorities for how they are managing the war.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX, said Friday that his company could not indefinitely fund Internet service in Ukraine with its Starlink terminals, which have been critical in allowing the Ukrainian military to coordinate on the battlefield, including in recent offensives.

His comments, made on Twitter, came just over a week after he drew a fierce public rebuke from Ukrainian officials for suggesting a peace plan to end the war that included ceding territory to Russia.

More than 12,000 Starlink Internet terminals, which were designed to work with satellites orbiting in space to provide online access, have been delivered to Ukraine since Russias invasion in late February.

Musk took to Twitter on Friday after CNN reported that SpaceX had sent a letter to the Pentagon last month asking it to take over the funding of Ukrainian government and military use of Starlink. He did not mention the Pentagon in his Twitter comments but talked about the difficulties of funding Starlink.

SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households, Musk wrote on Twitter.

Pentagon officials said that there have been discussions about how to help the Ukrainian military to stay online during the war. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Defense Department officials hope that Musk and Ukrainian officials can work out a path forward but added that the possibility of the Pentagon footing the bill was not out of the question.

The Department continues to work with industry to explore solutions for Ukraines armed forces as they repel Russias brutal and unprovoked aggression, the Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, said in an e-mail. We do not have anything else to add at this time.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraines minister of digital transformation, said Musk was among the worlds top private donors supporting the country.

Starlink is an essential element of our critical infrastructure, he wrote on Twitter.

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