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Ukrainian top brass refutes reports of orders to mobilize half million fresh recruits

Valery Zaluzhny declined from revealing the exact number of the currently mobilized people in Ukraine saying it was a classified military information

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/. The top brass of the Ukrainian armed forces never filed a request regarding an additional mobilization of 500,000, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said on Tuesday.

"The military command never filed a request stipulating any figures," Zaluzhny said speaking on air of Ukraine’s television channel Rada. "The military command submits requests for supplies of ammunition, weapons and the manpower. It is done on a permanent basis."

Zaluzhny declined from revealing the exact number of the currently mobilized people in Ukraine saying it was a classified military information.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told a news conference on December 19 that the military had suggested mobilizing an additional 450,000-500,000 men, as well as women. He speculated that such mobilization would cost the strapped Ukrainian budget an extra $13.4 billion.

In February 2022, Ukraine announced a general mobilization and has repeatedly extended it since. The authorities have been doing everything possible to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft. In particular, potential conscripts are banned from traveling abroad.

Conscription orders are issued at public administration offices on the streets and many other sites where large numbers of people congregate. Ukrainian media outlets report that many men literally avoid stepping outside their homes for months on end to avoid being forcibly mobilized by mobile conscription squads and sent to the war zone.

Ukraine’s aggressive mobilization campaign has already sparked numerous scandals. The media regularly publish stories of military mobilization officers using force against citizens when handing out conscription orders, or conscripting people unfit for service for health reasons, as well as many instances of lawmakers and civil servants abusing their authority to surreptitiously secrete their conscription age sons to locations abroad, out of reach of Kiev’s mobilization squads.

On August 23, Zelensky said that the military had asked him to step up mobilization activities.

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