Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree boosting the size of the army by 15,500 troops in the fourth such order this year. "The authorised personnel strength of the Russian armed forces is to be set at 2,441,630 units, including 1,550,500 military personnel," the decree said. Putin had previously signed documents boosting the size of the army in March, June and July.
The combined increase since March amounts to 47,860 soldiers. The president did not state the reason for the decision, but it has been taken against the backdrop of rising losses on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides in the full-scale war in Ukraine. This year, the pace of advance of Russian troops on the battlefield has slowed, as the widespread use of drones has made rapid movement of large formations almost impossible.
In addition, recent weeks have brought reports of Ukrainian breakthroughs on certain sections of the front. The last time Putin announced a "partial mobilisation" of reservists was in September 2022 after a series of setbacks at the front. That decree remains in force.
In August, Ukraine's intelligence services reported that Moscow plans to call up up to 300,000 people this year for deployment to the front, and the same number again next year. A number of analysts, citing data on preparatory measures by the Russian authorities on the ground, predicted a new wave of mobilisation as soon as this autumn, immediately after elections to the State Duma, which triggered "panic" among Russians and a surge of interest in emigration. Putin dismissed these rumours as "utter nonsense".
The Kremlin insisted that the needs of Russia's armed forces were supposedly being met by contract soldiers and volunteers, while independent analysts say that recruitment among them continues to shrink despite promises of large financial rewards. "In essence, Russia has already begun additional mobilisation, it is expanding the scale of recruitment to its ranks, using various methods for this. It also plans to increase the number of foreigners, and it is important that the governments of the countries from which Russia recruits people into its ranks counteract this," the Ukrainian president said on Tuesday, commenting on Putin's decree in a video address published on his page on X.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added that he has new data indicating that North Korea is preparing to send 10,000 of its soldiers to Russia, in addition to the 8,000 who have already been deployed there.
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