Mobilization has not stopped in Russia since March 2022. It began 3 weeks after the start of the war. It was hidden and partial. That is, it was not announced, and individual military specialties were called. Aleksey Arestovich, the adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, spoke about this in a conversation with Russian human rights activist Mark Feygin on YouTube
"In September, it became open and partial. As before, not everyone was called, but it became open. There was a wave of mobilization, where they gathered 249 thousand people, then they reached 300 thousand. Of these, about 150 thousand were immediately sent to the front or close to the borders. And some of the mobilized were not lucky. They had 2-3 days of training, and after that, they went to "plug holes".
The other part was sent to training camps, including in Belarus. There, the groups prepared very badly, some very well, and some are still training. Their task is to replenish the cadre army, which has been greatly thinned out in Ukraine. And some of them (the first wave of mobilization) are already arriving on the territory of Ukraine. This is part of those 200 thousand mobilized that General Zaluzhny spoke about.
The decision to use a group of 200,000 by the Russian command has already been made.
This is a signal both for the Russians, who do not want to be mobilized and for us.
For Ukrainians, this means that a Russian offensive awaits us in the near future. And the Russians need to understand the following: that this wave of 200,000 people has already been "buried" by the Russian command. They understand how it ends. An attempt at any offensive, in any direction, by a grouping that is barely 40% combat-ready than the troops that attacked at the beginning of the war will not be successful.
The Russian command has already written off all these mobilized, so they need to recruit the next 200-300 thousand. This mobilization is about to start around January 5th, and border closures are planned for this process. The Russians are still debating when and at what time and for what categories, but the decision to close the borders has been made. There were questions about the scale and timing. Why? Because they understand that another million people will run away from the second wave. The Kazakh border is very convenient. There is bare steppe and you can drive to many places, and then it is up to Kazakhstan to accept or not accept. And until now, Kakhastan accepts, as people with intelligence and money are fleeing Russia" explained Aleksey Arestovich.
