Russia justified today the increase in its army, ordered on Monday by President Vladimir Putin, with the threats on its borders with the West, in the context of the war with Ukraine.
"This is due to the number of threats against our country," said Kremlin spokesman (Russian presidency), Dmitry Peskov, when asked about Putin's decision.
The Russian leader signed a decree on Monday that sets the authorized strength of the Russian Armed Forces at 2.3 million people, including 1.5 million military personnel.
In the previous decree, now revoked, the numbers were 2.2 million people, including 1.3 million military personnel, according to the official Russian news agency TASS.
This is the third increase in military personnel decreed by Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
In December 2023, Putin increased the number of troops by almost 170,000. In August 2022, as Ukrainians began to regain ground, he had already ordered a 137,000-strong increase in the armed forces. The decision was due to "an extremely hostile situation on our western borders and instability on our eastern borders," Peskov said, as quoted by the French news agency AFP.
The situation "requires the adoption of appropriate measures," he added. The United States and the United Kingdom are considering allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russian territory, prompting Putin to say that this would mean that NATO "would be at war with Russia." Russia, which has about 700,000 troops in Ukraine, has accelerated its recruitment of troops in recent weeks due to the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk border region. With the new increase in troops, Russian media have reported that Russia's army will become the second largest in the world, after China.
In order to recruit more people, the authorities have been running major advertising campaigns across the country, promising high salaries and numerous tax and social benefits to potential recruits.
They have also recruited tens of thousands of inmates from the country's prisons, according to AFP.
Russia does not mention the human losses in Ukraine, but many independent analyses, as well as those of Western intelligence services, estimate that they are colossal, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded.
On the front line, the Russian army is much larger than that of Ukraine, a country with a population more than three times smaller than Russia's (around 40 million compared to around 145 million).
The Kremlin has also redirected the Russian economy towards the war effort, increasing the defense budget and rapidly developing the military industry, according to AFP.
In a commentary on Putin’s decision, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the increase in military personnel goes beyond the war in Ukraine and is part of a long-term goal. Putin wants to “increase the size and overall potential of the Russian army through long-term and large-scale military reforms,” said experts from ISW, a Washington-based think tank. The ongoing reforms, which are set to begin in 2023, include the restoration of the Moscow and Leningrad military districts and the formation of new army corps, as well as mechanized and airborne divisions.
“However, Russia’s ability to adequately adopt these reforms and integrate the increase in combat personnel depends in part on the conduct of the war in Ukraine,” ISW added in a report cited by Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency.
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