Moscow - (AFP) - The Russian authorities vowed to fix "mistakes" made in the context of President Vladimir Putin's declaration of mobilization, after summoning people to fight who were supposed to be exempt, sparking controversy.

With Putin announcing a "partial mobilization" of reservists Wednesday to head to Ukraine, he made it clear that only people with military experience or "relevant" skills would be called up.

However, summoning people who were over fighting age, sick, or exempt for other reasons sparked angry reactions on social media, embarrassing the authorities.

In the Volgograd region (southwest), a 63-year-old retired soldier with diabetes and head problems was summoned to a training center before he was allowed to leave.

In the same area, Alexander Valtin, 58, who is the director of a small rural school, was summoned, noting that he had not served in the army before. After his daughter posted a video on social media that was widely circulated, he was able to return home.

After an uncharacteristic acknowledgment that mistakes had been made, Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, blamed the regional authorities overseeing the mobilization.

In a statement on the Telegram website, it denounced "inappropriate summons that have sparked heated debate in society and on social media."

"Some seem to think that submitting a report quickly is more important than properly performing an important task for the state. These abuses are completely unacceptable," she added.

It ordered that "the partial mobilization be completed in full respect of the standards that have been announced, and without making a single mistake."

These failures constitute a new example of the organizational difficulties that Russia has been witnessing since the start of its invasion of Ukraine.

And the Ministry of Defense announced on Saturday the replacement of Deputy Defense Minister General of the Army Dmitry Bulgakov, General Mikhail Mizintsev (60 years), who until then headed the National Defense Control Center.

While the authorities confirm that summoning people who are supposed to be exempt are only isolated cases, their statements indicate a kind of anxiety in the face of the reaction of part of the angry population.

On Saturday, the head of the Kremlin's Human Rights Council, Valery Fadaev, called on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu "to urgently solve the problems" so as not to "shake the people's trust."

And he talked about 70 heads of a large family who were summoned in the Russian region of Buryatti, western Siberia, in addition to nurses and midwives who do not have any military experience in the Sverdlovsk (Ural) region, "under pain of prosecution," in the event of refusal.

Fadaev also criticized those who "hand out summons at two in the morning, as if they consider us all (fugitives)". He warned that this method is frowned upon.

Faced with the situation, the governors of the regions near Moscow and in Leningrad (northwest) undertook to return people who were mistakenly summoned to their homes.

On Sunday, Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko asked the heads of districts in his region "to personally take care of residents' complaints and every file."

Many students also confirmed that they had been summoned, knowing that the authorities had promised to exempt them.
On Saturday evening, Putin signed a decree exempting those pursuing professional disciplines in state universities and schools.
In addition, demonstrators against the invasion of Ukraine are also raising controversy, as they received summonses while they were in police custody, while the Kremlin confirmed that it did not see it as "illegal".