Ukraine: Putin orders another 137,000 Russia troops amid reports of heavy casualties
Western and Kyiv officials predict Russia’s losses in the thousands
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Your support makes all the difference.Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to increase by another 137,000 troops from next year as Moscow’s invasion in Ukraine passes the six-month mark.
The Russian president’s decree, signed on Thursday, did not explain whether the military will increase its ranks by drafting a bigger number of conscripts, taking more volunteer soldiers or using a combination of both.
The Kremlin has said that only volunteer contract soldiers take part in what it calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine, rejecting claims that it was considering a broad mobilisation.
It comes amid reports that Russian forces have suffered heavy losses, though Moscow is yet to publish any official number of its casualties.
However, Western officials and the Kyiv government say they number in the thousands.
Kyiv has also been reluctant to publish information on how many of its soldiers have died in the war, but on Monday the head of Ukraine’s armed forces said almost 9,000 service personnel had been killed, in a rare update.
Putin seeks to boost the number of Russian armed forces personnel to 2,039,758 overall, including 1,150,628 servicemen. The expansion of the army will come into effect on 1 January.
A previous order put the military’s numbers at 1,902,758 and 1,013,628 respectively at the start of 2018.
The last time Putin fixed the size of the Russian army was in November 2017, when the number of combat personnel was set at 1.01 million from a total armed forces headcount, including non-combatants, of 1.9 million.
According to an authoritative annual report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia had 900,000 active service personnel at the start of this year, and reserves of 2 million people with service within the past five years.
All Russian men aged 18-27 must serve one year in the military, but a large share avoids the draft for health reasons or deferments granted to university students. The share of men who avoid the draft is particularly big in Moscow and other major cities.
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