President Putin Orders Russian Military To Recruit At Least 180,000 Troops Amid War With Ukraine
This development comes as Russia’s military operation in Ukraine continues beyond two and a half years.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has issued a decree ordering an increase in the country’s military personnel by 180,000, bringing the total number of troops to 1.5 million.
This development comes as Russia’s military operation in Ukraine continues beyond two and a half years.
The decree, published on the official government website, will take effect on December 1 and sets the overall number of Russian military personnel at approximately 2.4 million, comprising 1.5 million troops.
The government has been instructed to provide the necessary funding to support this expansion.
This marks the second increase in Russian troop numbers in less than a year, following a previous decree by Putin in December that set the total number of military personnel at around 2.2 million, including 1.32 million troops.
Meanwhile, Russia’s most capable troops have been advancing in eastern Ukraine, making gradual but consistent gains over the past few months, AP reports.
In June, Putin put the number of troops involved in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine at nearly 700,000.
After calling up 300,000 reservists in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, Russian authorities have switched to filling the ranks of troops fighting in Ukraine with volunteer soldiers, who have been attracted by relatively high wages.
Many commentators have noted that the Kremlin has been reluctant to call more reservists, fearing domestic destabilization like what happened in 2022 when hundreds of thousands fled Russia to avoid being sent to combat.
The shortage of military personnel has been widely cited as a key reason behind the success of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region launched Aug. 6.
The Kremlin has sought to avoid the redeployment of troops from eastern Ukraine and relied on reinforcements from other areas to stem the Ukrainian incursion. The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday reported reclaiming control of two more villages in the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces.
