Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree ordering an increase in the number of soldiers in the army by 10%, amid an offensive against Ukraine and against the backdrop of rising tensions with Western countries.
And the army will have to have two million elements, including 1.15 million soldiers, compared to 1.9 million, including just over a million fighters, in 2017, according to this decree published by the government, and it will enter into force on the first of next January.
Concretely, and not counting the number of civilians, this represented an increase of 137,000 soldiers, or more than a tenth of the current combat power.
This action, the reasons for which are not explained in the decree, comes at a time when the Russian army has been waging an offensive in Ukraine for more than six months, which is very costly in terms of human and material resources.
After failing to capture Kyiv at the start of the intervention, Moscow’s forces are now concentrating their efforts in eastern and southern Ukraine, where the fronts have moved little in recent weeks.
The Kremlin has so far refrained from proceeding with general mobilization, a measure many Russians fear.
The increase in the number of Russian soldiers also comes at a time when relations between Moscow and Western countries are going through a crisis of a magnitude unprecedented since the end of the Cold War.
