According to the Ukrainian National Resistance Center, officials in Russia’s so-called “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts have started putting together lists of schoolchildren who can be conscripted into the Russian army, starting with those who will come of age this year.
“Ukrainian children born in 2005-2006 in the temporarily occupied territories must register for ‘compulsory military registration,’” the center said in a report on Monday. “Admission onto the so-called registry is taking place in the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.”
Citing local underground resistance, the center said Russian occupiers are forming lists of those who can be mobilized immediately after graduation from school.
“First of all those who come of age in 2023,” it said.
The National Resistance Center in its report called on the parents of schoolchildren in the regions to take their children “to a safe area whenever possible.”
Separately, an unnamed guest on Russian state TV recently suggested that schoolchildren should be trained to fight in case they need to go to war.
An excerpt from Russia’s 60 Minutes program was shared on Twitter on Monday by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.
“Somebody is panicking about another wave of mobilization,” the unnamed guest on 60 Minutes said in the clip. “In fact, I will tell you frankly, the wave of mobilization should have been yesterday.
“We have to prepare our population in schools and everywhere else for the fact that we will all have to stand in the same line in case of such events. That is, we don’t have to look around thinking we are going to say something scary,” he said, according to a translation accompanying the clip.
The guest, who was wearing military uniform and appeared to be speaking from Popasna in the Donbas region added: “This is World War III. We have to be ready for it.”
Earlier, the National Resistance Center suggested that Russia had planned a wave of mobilization in regions it partially occupies in Ukraine.
The center said on January 2 that the Kremlin hasn’t, despite its previous announcements, stopped the partial mobilization that was called by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21.
“Despite statements by high-ranking authorities, the enemy is not stopping ‘partial mobilization,’ which is actually large-scale,” it said. “At the beginning of 2023, the enemy is planning a new wave [of mobilization], which will concern residents in the temporarily occupied south.”
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.
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