(Reuters) – Some Russian technology professionals, bankers, and journalists at state media outlets will be not be called up to serve in Ukraine as part of Russia’s mobilisation drive, the defence ministry said on Friday in a statement.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said earlier this week Russia would seek to call up 300,000 additional troops for Russia’s war in Ukraine in what the Kremlin has called a “partial mobilisation”.
The section of the official decree announcing mobilisation which included the number of people who would be drafted was kept classified and unpublished, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He rejected a report by the independent Novaya Gazeta paper on Thursday, citing a government source, that said the Kremlin is actually seeking to recruit up to one million people for the campaign.
The defence ministry said some employees working in critically important industries would be excluded from the draft in a bid to “ensure the work of specific high-tech industries, as well as Russia’s financial system” is unaffected by Russia’s first military mobilisation since World War Two.
The exceptions apply to some IT workers, telecommunications workers, finance professionals, as well as some employees at “systemically-important” mass media outlets, the ministry said in a statement.
It said heads of companies should draw up lists of their employees who meet the criteria and can be excluded from the draft.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
