New Russian conscripts have had “very, very limited training” and will be using extremely “poor equipment”, said a Western official, after Vladimir Putin said the call-up of reservists will be over in two weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have been summoned to fight in Ukraine in an unpopular mobilisation that has seen huge numbers flee the country.
Putin ordered the mobilisation three weeks ago, part of a response to Russian battlefield defeats. He has also proclaimed the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces and threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russian territory is attacked.
Russia has since seen the first signs of sizable public criticism of the authorities since the war began and officials have acknowledged some mistakes.
Members of ethnic minorities and rural residents have complained of being drafted at higher rates than ethnic Russians and city dwellers.
Defending the order, Putin said the front line was too long to defend solely with contract soldiers.
He said 222,000 out of an expected 300,000 reservists had already been mobilized. "This work is coming to an end," he told a news conference at the end of a summit in Kazakhstan. "I think that in about two weeks all the mobilisation activities will be finished."
Since the mobilisation order was given, Russian forces have continued to lose ground in eastern Ukraine and the south.
And a Western official said some of the newly mobilised Russian troops were already on the battlefield taking casualties, and that their presence was unlikely to turn the tide. "It is clear that they have been fielded with very, very limited training and very, very poor equipment," the official said.
The official also suggested Russia had too few missiles to sustain attacks like those this week: "Russia is rapidly exhausting its supply of long-range precision munitions, in particular its air-launched cruise missiles," he said.
Ukraine's top general, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, struck an upbeat tone after his country's rapid advances in the north east and south.
"The strategic initiative is in our hands, so the main thing is not to stop," Zaluzhnyi said after speaking by phone with the commander in chief of Europe's combined NATO forces, US General Christopher Cavoli.
Ukraine's General Staff said on Facebook late on Friday that Ukraine's forces had destroyed large amounts of Russian arms and equipment in Antratsyt south of Luhansk, where Ukraine hopes to recapture major towns after its successes in Kharkiv region.
It said Russian forces had launched more artillery and air strikes on towns including Konstantynivka south west of Bakhmut, their main target in Donetsk region, and Zaporizhzhia city.
Separately, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko put his country on what he called a heightened state of terrorism alert on Friday, the latest gesture hinting at growing pressure to join the war.
Lukashenko, Putin's closest international ally, has allowed Russian forces to use Belarus as a staging ground but so far kept his own troops out. This week he announced Russian troops would be joining Belarusian forces near the Ukrainian border.
