With criticism from pro-war bloggers over the reported deaths of new recruits fighting in Ukraine intensifying, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday defended his recent draft, saying that he had no regrets about the war in Ukraine.

His remarks came as prominent military bloggers have accused the Kremlin’s defence officials of throwing unprepared recruits into battle.

The draft has also run into resistance across Russia as villagers, activists and even some elected officials have asked why the conscription drive has appeared to hit minority groups and rural areas harder than the big cities.

In late September, anger with the call-up spilled over into street protests. Some 222,000 Russians already have been drafted and 16,000 of them have been deployed “in units that get involved in fulfilling combat tasks”, Putin told a news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, adding that he expects the mobilisation to be completed within two weeks.

When Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” in September, he said that servicemen called up for active duty would “undergo mandatory additional military training”.

The Russian government said that such training could take up to one month. Russian media has reported at least seven deaths among people who were recently drafted.

Asked on Friday why some mobilised servicemen had died so soon after mobilisation began, Putin said that in some cases training could take just 10 days.

“The contact line is 1,100km long, it was not possible to keep it up with contract soldiers alone,” Putin said. “All mobilised citizens must be trained.”

When asked if he had any regrets about the war, Putin said “no”. “We would get the same situation in worse conditions,” he said.

Nevertheless, in late September, Putin acknowledged that there had been “mistakes” in how the Russian government had been carrying out his draft.

He described cases of people entitled to deferments being wrongly drafted, such as fathers of many children, men with chronic diseases or those above military ages.

Roman Saponkov, a Russian military blogger, responded to the reports of recent deaths by saying on Thursday that the mobilisation should have been declared six months earlier because now the country’s military command is under pressure to deploy troops to the front lines as soon as possible to help repel Ukraine’s recent advances.

“That’s why we will see many deaths among the mobilised,” he said in his blog.

“Today they are superheroes who were thrown to rescue the situation at the last moment.”

New York Times News Service