Would Moscow have difficulty recruiting soldiers into its ranks? For Washington, the answer is yes. In the midst of the conflict with Ukraine, the army would even be forced to seek volunteers even in prisons, to the point that new recruits are often “old, in bad shape and poorly trained”, said a senior official on Monday. of the Pentagon. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered last week to increase the Russian army’s strength by 10%, or some 137,000 soldiers by January 2023.
But “this effort is unlikely to be successful,” the official, who requested anonymity, told reporters, explaining that the Russian military has historically struggled to meet its recruitment targets. The United States estimates that the strength of the Russian army was 150,000 fewer than the stated goal of one million troops in February 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine.
Many Russians fear general mobilization
Since then, Russia has tried to send professional soldiers to the front rather than conscripts, but the conflict is costly in terms of human and material resources. “Russia has already started recruiting more to form at least one volunteer battalion per district and to raise a Third Army Corps,” she said. “They did this by removing the age limit for new recruits and also by recruiting prisoners. »
“We could observe that many of these new recruits were old, in bad shape and poorly trained,” she concluded. “All this suggests that the new recruits that Russia may attract by the end of the year will not strengthen the combat power” of the country.
After failing to take kyiv at the start of the intervention, Russian 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 a general mobilization, a measure feared by many Russians.