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The Kremlin said Tuesday that an order by President Vladimir Putin to turn Russia’s military into the world’s second largest was needed to deal with growing threats to Russia’s western borders and instability in the east .
Putin on Monday ordered the regular size of Russia’s military to be increased from 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make it the second largest in the world after China.
“This is due to the number of threats that exist to our country along the perimeter of our borders,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a teleconference.
“It is caused by the extremely hostile environment in our western borders and the instability in our eastern borders. This requires appropriate measures to be taken.”
According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading military think tank, such an increase would see Russia leapfrog the United States and India in terms of the number of active combat troops it has at his disposal and be second only. to China in size.
The move, the third time Putin has expanded the ranks of the army since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, comes as Russian forces advance into eastern Ukraine as part of a vast frontline of 1000 km (627 miles) and try to expel the Ukrainian forces. from the Kursk region of Russia.
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the defense committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said on Monday that part of the rationale for the expansion was to create new facilities and military units to improve security in the northwest of Russia after neighboring Finland joined the NATO alliance.
Russia has also expressed concerns over what it describes as the growing militarization of Japan supported by the United States and potential plans to deploy American missiles there.
Although Russia has a population more than three times larger than Ukraine and has been successful in recruiting volunteers on lucrative contracts to fight in Ukraine, it has – like Kiev’s forces – sustained heavy losses in the field of battle, and there is no sign that the war will end soon. .
Both sides say the exact size of their losses is a military secret.
Putin by 2022 had previously ordered two official increases in the number of combat troops – from 137,000 and 170,000 respectively.
In addition, Russia mobilized more than 300,000 soldiers in September and October 2022 in an exercise that prompted tens of thousands of draft-age men to flee the country.
The Kremlin said that no new mobilization is planned for now, and that the idea is to continue to rely on volunteers who sign up to fight in Ukraine.
Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, asked whether Moscow was ready to foot the bill for the increase in active military.
“There are ways to establish a permanent force of 1.5 million, but the Kremlin will not like it if it is really what it requires,” Massicot wrote on X.
“Are they really able to strengthen the defense budget to support the procurement And this requirement?”
Massicot, who published a report on Russia’s drive to regenerate its army, said Moscow could take the unpopular and difficult decision to expand the size of the draft or change the law to allow more women to work. in the army to achieve such a goal.
“Look for signs that this is a real initiative to recruit and expand, and not a kind of show to intimidate others. The current voluntary method is working, but it has strains. This (expansion) means more expenditure/effort”, he said.
