Vladimir Putin wants to break the stalemate in Ukraine: the president expands the Russian army with 137,000 soldiers

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As of January next year, the Russian army will have 1.15 million soldiers, which is about 137,000 more than today. In total, the number of serving in the army will increase to more than two million people. In 2017, this was still 1.9 million people, of whom more than 1 million were fighters.

An official reason for the expansion has not been revealed. But the decision is suspected to be related to slow progress in Ukraine. The Russian military has been on the offensive in Ukraine for six months now, but the war has already required a great deal of human and material resources and hardly any progress has been made in recent weeks. Since the beginning of July, when the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region was captured, the Russians could not capture significant lands.

Military analysts and journalists on the ground blame the slow progress of the Russian offensive on a lack of manpower. Western estimates of the total number of Russian casualties, both dead and wounded, are as high as 80,000.

This is not the first time Putin has tried to expand his army. Earlier think of a file general packing And he went to look for him “War Volunteers”, but both were unsuccessful. There is not enough enthusiasm in Russia for general mobilization and few recruits “voluntarily” offered themselves – despite financial incentives.

Currently, Russia requires all men between the ages of 18 and 27 to perform one year of active military service. In addition, in the army, of course, there are also professional soldiers – including women – on permanent service. Until recently, contract soldiers were allowed the maximum age for soldiers to be 40, but at the end of May Putin actually signed a law that put an end to this age limit.