Since the beginning of 2022, Russia has forcibly mobilized from 55,000 to 60,000 men in the occupied territories of Ukraine, military intelligence spokesperson Andrii Cherniak said on July 30.
"The occupiers caught people on the street, they came to the few businesses that were still working and forcibly took people away - they simply dressed the people up and sent them to the front," Cherniak told Donbas Realii, a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
"They (Russian forces) promised that the mobilized would be on the second or third line, but in reality, people ended up on the front line."
In particular, Russia is mobilizing students residing in occupied Ukrainian cities into its military, according to the intelligence official.
"A person went to class in the morning and two days later they are already fighting (against Ukrainian forces). Strictly speaking, Russia does not consider the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as human beings, so the occupiers do not care, the laws do not apply. The only real possibility [to survive] is to surrender immediately, at the first opportunity," Cherniak added in the interview.
Russia currently occupies parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv oblasts as well the entire Crimean peninsula.
Francis Farrell
(Updated: )
