Yeah "signed up"

Lots of comments seem to be missing the forest for the trees. Putin knows he has a draft-dodger problem. Whenever rumors of conscription go around, able-bodied young men flee the country in droves and that's a big, salient problem. When the Defence Minister declares that they're not planning another mobilisation, that is not propaganda aimed at making Russia look good for you or me. It's propaganda aimed at making another draft seem unlikely to Russian citizens.

To that end, the Defence Minister just needs to tell the truth (albeit sanitized): "We vacuumed up a bunch of Wagner dropouts and made up the rest of the difference through selective impressment of people who won't be missed". That's good enough for the average young Russian man going about his day: "Well, I wasn't pressed into service and thanks to those other guys now I'm safe from getting drafted". Nobody panics, nobody flees, and business as usual in Russia continues on.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Russia has been bolstering its armed forces and ramping up weapons production in the expectation of a long war in Ukraine, where front lines have barely shifted for a year.

Those figures indicate that Russia has made significant progress both in signing recruits and in absorbing many fighters from the Wagner mercenary force into "voluntary formations".

Putin ordered a "partial mobilisation" of 300,000 reservists in September last year, prompting hundreds of thousands of young men to flee Russia to avoid being sent to fight.

But the future course of the war is uncertain, despite predictions by U.S. officials earlier this year that Russia's defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine would pierce Putin's hubris.

"What I said months ago was it's going to be long, hard, bloody because the nature of this particular fight and the type of defense that the Russians put in," Milley said.

While the Kremlin expects the United States to continue to support Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in security assistance, Putin is betting on Western fatigue over the war.

The original article contains 637 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Only reservists have been called up? No new conscription? That's fucking wild tbh

Only in putinville does 'pressed into service' or 'conscripted' mean "signed up".

This is hilarious.

So russia has mandatory military training, each year a certain number of men are called, this has been happening for many years, it's just standard boot camp. Shoigu assured everyone that this year's conscripts won't have to go to Ukraine, training will be done as usual (on russian territory only) and then they can go home.

Looks like he changed his mind.