The mobilised reservists that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited last week at a firing range southeast of Moscow looked picture-perfect.
Kremlin video of the young men headed for the war in Ukraine showed them in mint-condition uniforms, equipped with all the gear needed for combat: helmets, bulletproof vests and sleeping bags. When Putin asked if they had any problems, they shook their heads.
That stands in stark contrast with the complaints circulating widely on Russian news outlets and social media of equipment shortages, poor living conditions and scant training for the new recruits.
Since Putin announced the mobilisation on September 21, independent media, human rights activists and those called up have painted a bleak picture of a haphazard, chaotic and ethnically biased effort to round up as many men as possible and push them quickly to the front lines, regardless of skill, training and equipment.
Videos on Russian social networks showed conscripted men complaining of cramped, filthy accommodations, toilets overflowing with trash and a lack of food and medicine. Some showed men displaying rusty weapons.
In one video, a group of draftees milled in a field, claiming they had been left there with no food or shelter. Other clips depicted men forced to sleep on bare benches or tightly packed on the floor. “We didn't seek you out; you called us. Here, look at this! How long can this go on?” an exasperated voice says in a video.
Putin's decree on the partial mobilisation didn't outline the criteria for draftees or say how many would be called up.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said it will affect only about 300,000 reservists with relevant combat or service experience.
Conscription protests have been harshly put down, and tens of thousands of men fled Russia to neighbouring countries to avoid being pressed into service.
In the week after the decree, a young man opened fire on a recruitment officer in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, seriously wounding him.
On October 15, a shootout at a training camp in the southern Belgorod region killed 11 people and wounded 15 others. Enlistment offices and other administrative buildings also have been set on fire.
It's now clear that in a country where almost all men under 65 are registered as part of the reserve, the mobilisation process wasn't carried out carefully.
There has been a flood of reports of call-up summonses being served to those with no military experience. Police rounded up men in the streets of Moscow and other cities, or raided hostels to apprehend guests of fighting age.
Enlistment offices often skipped required health checks.
The hasty call-up will hardly achieve anything other than “slowing down the advances” of Ukrainian troops in the 8-month-old war, military analyst Pavel Luzin said in an interview.
Moscow is simply “prolonging the agony” in Ukraine, said Luzin, a visiting scholar at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Activists also say ethnic minorities in some regions were drafted in disproportionate numbers. Videos circulated of protests in the Muslim majority region of Dagestan, with relatives complaining that the area was providing more recruits than elsewhere. Vladimir Budaev of the Free Buryatia Foundation told AP that Indigenous people in Russia's Far North and along the Mongolian border were “rounded up in their villages” in the drive.
In remote regions of Sakha and Buryatia, enlistment officers scoured the taiga for potential draftees, and “handed out summonses to anyone they met,” he said.
According to Yekaterina Morland, an ethnic Buryat volunteer at the Asians of Russia Foundation, Buryatia has seen mobilisation rates up to six times higher than Russia's European regions.
In the first two weeks of the call-up, authorities in some regions reported sending home hundreds of men who were drafted despite not meeting the criteria. “The task of a military enlistment office is to recruit — recruit whoever they can grab,” says Elena Popova, the coordinator of the Movement of Conscientious Objectors.
Putin himself publicly acknowledged “mistakes” in the process and demanded its improvement.
But even when the summonses went to those who had served in the army, it didn't necessarily mean that they had battlefield skills. Some former conscripts often don't get proper military training when they serve and instead are engaged in menial labour.
A woman who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals said her 31-year-old husband did his mandatory service six years ago and had "no training at a firing range, or any combat drills in the field,” said authorities tried to draft him anyway.
In fact, he had only held a weapon once, when they were taught how to strip down and reassemble an automatic rifle, she said. Mostly, she added, “they were sweeping (the compound), cleaning the snow."
Relatives of conscripts reported having to spend their own money on gear and basic necessities. Online groups were formed to raise funds for equipment.
One campaign was run by Kremlin-backed lawmaker and state TV host Yevgeny Popov, who said reservists in the Taman artillery division got shoes and clothes, but had "an acute shortage of drones, walkie-talkies, smartphones with maps (for gunners), binoculars, headlamps (and) power banks,” he said.
Russian media reported multiple deaths of reservists in Ukraine, with their relatives telling news outlets that they had received very little training.