Putin promised poorly trained conscripts wouldn’t be sent to war. Now the front line has come to them

(CNN) — Russian President Vladimir Putin made a big promise when he launched his war on Ukraine: conscripts would not be involved in combat. But as Moscow struggles to contain Ukrainian advances deeper into its territory, families of young soldiers deployed in the area are raising the alarm about their loved ones.

Messages shared in Russian Telegram channels and other social media over the past few days have revealed how unprepared Moscow was for this kind of attack, including the fact that its military had left poorly trained conscripts in charge of defending the border with Ukraine – the country Russia has been waging war on for more than 10 years.

“When the border was attacked at 3 a.m. by tanks, there were only conscripts defending themselves,” said one such message shared on Telegram by a woman who said she was a mother of a conscript soldier in Kursk, the border region that Ukrainian troops crossed into last week.

“They didn’t see a single soldier, not a single contract soldier — they didn’t see anyone at all. My son called later and said, ‘Mom, we’re in shock;,” the woman, identified only as Olga, said.

CNN has asked Russia’s defense ministry for comment, but has not received an answer.

The deployment of conscripts is a thorny issue in Russia. That’s partly because of Putin’s repeated promises that they would not be sent to fight, but also due to fact that the mothers and wives of soldiers have traditionally been an influential voice inside the country where dissent is now almost nonexistent – and many are expressing their anger.

The independent Russian news outlet Verstka published an interview with Natalia Appel, the grandmother of one Russian conscript who was serving in Kursk and is now considered missing.

She said her grandson Vladislav had been stationed – without any weapons – in a village some 500 meters from the border. “What could the boys do? Go against (the Ukrainian soldiers) with a shovel?,” she was quoted as saying.

A petition calling on Putin to remove conscripts from the area has been shared online and dozens of messages from people who claimed to be family members of Russian conscripts who have gone missing in Kursk region have been posted on various social media, including the Russian network VKotante.

The fact that Russia was relying on conscripts to defend the border is likely why Ukrainian troops managed to advance into Russian territory with such apparent ease when they first launched the incursion last Tuesday.

Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said that Ukrainian troops have advanced 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) through Russian defenses since the incursion started.

“We have taken control of 1,150 square kilometers of territory and 82 settlements,” Syrskyi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an on-camera staff meeting Thursday.

Limited training, no weapons

All healthy men in Russia are subject to conscription and, if drafted, required to serve one year in the military.

The country’s military usually runs two drafts a year, one in the spring and one in the fall, conscripting well over 100,000 young men each time. Draft avoidance is a crime and can be punished with a prison term.

The treatment of conscripts has been a political third rail in the past for Russia. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Russia’s war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the mothers of conscripts mobilized to campaign against the abuse of conscripts.

While Russian civil society has largely been defanged under Putin, the treatment of conscripts is still a sensitive issue for families. Avoiding the draft is easier for the sons of the wealthier and politically privileged.

Last year, Putin ordered the conscription age to increase by three years to 30, so that anyone between the ages of 18 and 30 could be drafted.

Unlike professional soldiers, conscripts receive only limited training before they are sent to their posts, as the law prohibits their deployment overseas and they are not meant to participate in combat operations.

Instead, the Russia has often stationed conscripts along its long borders, not expecting them to ever come under attack. But when Ukraine launched its recent surprise incursion, these conscripts suddenly found themselves on the frontline, completely unprepared to defend themselves.

The deployment of conscripts to the border was also criticized by Russian opposition leaders.

The Anti-War Committee of Russia, a group formed by exiled Russians, issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing the Russian president. It said “the absence of any significant military units of the Russian Federation on the border at the time of the attack and the simultaneous continuous conduct of aggressive military operations for more than 900 days on the territory of sovereign Ukraine is the best proof that Putin is lying again about ‘protecting Russia.’ He doesn’t care about Russia, he is only protecting himself.”

In a belated attempt to counter Ukraine’s incursion, Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from occupied territory inside Ukraine, two senior US officials told CNN. Sources said multiple brigade-sized elements made up of at least 1,000 troops each appeared to have moved to the Kursk region, the sources said.

“It is apparent to us that Mr. Putin and the Russian military are diverting some resources, some units, towards Kursk Oblast to ostensibly counter what the Ukrainians are doing,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN Thursday.

In addition to the troops moved from inside Ukraine, Russia has also sent personnel from the Leningrad military district and Kaliningrad, in Russia, to help defend Kursk, one of the senior US officials said.

Conscripts taken prisoner

At least some of the conscripts appear to have been taken as prisoners and brought to Ukraine.

Zelensky confirmed earlier this week that Kyiv’s forces were taking prisoners of war as they continued to advance into Kursk. The Ukrainian military also released several videos and photos of men they claimed were Russian prisoners of war – some of whom appeared to be very young men.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government department, said a company of Russian soldiers surrendered in the Kursk region and was taken prisoners after being abandoned by reinforcements.

The capture of Russian soldiers was the biggest imprisonment Kyiv had carried out against Moscow forces in one go, a source at Ukraine’s security service (SBU) told CNN on Thursday.

A video captured by Agence France-Presse near the border showed a Ukrainian military truck carrying a group of blindfolded men wearing what appear to be Russian military uniforms.

But while there seems to be outrage over their deployment, this is not the first time Russian conscripts were found to be fighting in Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia’s Ministry of Defense admitted that conscripts were “discovered” in Ukraine after Kyiv announced that some of the prisoners of war it took were not professional soldiers.

The Russian military then claimed the conscripts had been withdrawn and returned to Russia. It said the commanding officer responsible for the deployments had been punished.

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CNN’s Olga Voitovych, Maria Kostenko, Victoria Butenko, Darya Tarasova, Nathan Hodge, Caitlin Danaher, Katie Bo Lillis and Natasha Bertrand contributed reporting.