In December 2023, Vladimir Putin announced a further increase in the size of the Russian army, which went from 1,2 to 1,32 million active military personnel, and 2,3 million military personnel, including reserves.
Barely a year later, the Kremlin leader is doing it again, for the third time since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. This time, 180.000 additional soldiers will join the Russian armies from December 1, 2024, to reach a size of 1,5 million men, and 2,4 million, including reserves.
In doing so, the Russian armies will become the second largest armed force on the planet, in terms of numbers, behind China and its 2 million men, but ahead of the 1,32 million American soldiers, and the 1,43 million Indian soldiers, and on a par with the 1,55 million soldiers belonging to the European members of NATO.
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Vladimir Putin wants 180.000 more active military personnel in the Russian army, equal to the number of Bundeswehr personnel
On September 16, 2024, Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered the government to take the necessary measures, including from a budgetary point of view, to increase the strength of the Russian army by 180.000 men, and thus bring them to 1,5 million men. This is an increase equivalent to the entire German armed forces today (182.000 men), the second largest army in the European bloc after France (208.000 men).
The increase will take effect on December 1, 2024, exactly one year after the previous increase in personnel of 170.000 men, which brought the Russian army to a size of 1,32 million men, and 2,2 million, including reservists.
This will be the third massive increase in the size of the armies since the start of the conflict, with them having gone from 1 million men in January 2022 to a theoretical 1,5 million on January 1, 2025, without having to go through an unpopular mobilization, as was the case in November 2022, to contain the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
The new troops will be used, according to Vladimir Putin, to strengthen the armies, in particular the 700.000 men deployed as part of the "special military operation" in Ukraine, but also, certainly, to replenish the forces along the borders of NATO and other countries.
Russian army and reserve will make up 6% of Russian male workforce
With 1,5 million soldiers under the flag, and 900.000 reservists, the vast majority of whom are men, the military will then represent 6% of the Russian male population aged 15-64, with representation rates certainly much higher in the intermediate age groups.
This will be an unprecedented militarization effort in Russia, as in all OECD member countries, since the end of the Cold War, a number all the more significant as it concerns the male population supposed to be the most active in the country, even if two thirds of Russian women work today.
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Let's be realistic: this increase in numbers will be achieved by discreetly forcing the conscripts to sign a contract. This is a hidden mobilization, which does not bear the name.
I have family in Russia and I know this has happened to men they knew (but not my family, it's okay - for now)
Coercion of conscripts and the lure of supposedly very high salaries and bonuses are the two levers used to achieve these objectives.
Especially since the 200k + 400k are only the proven losses. They are all the poor guys scattered on the battlefield and not claimed 🙁
This asshole is killing his country :)
Russia has always had a great capacity to absorb human losses.
It remains to be seen whether this is still the case today.
Honestly, even though I know the country quite well, the passivity of the population astounds me, especially when you know the unhealthy attachment of Russian mothers to their children... If you go back to the meta-defense articles on the subject, you will see that they are rather close to what ultimately happened, except on the subject of losses acceptable to the Russian population: I would never have believed that the population would accept more than 5000 or 10 deaths.
when you look at history, especially on the last 2 world conflicts, we see that the capacity for "resilience" or rather "submission/resignation" of the Russian people is quite important, even if the contexts were different. in 1905 / 1914-1918 the majority who made up the Russian population were the Moujiks, peasants in the state of Serfs with little education and for whom the Tsar was untouchable (with the support of the Orthodox Church, ditto today the Church unreservedly supporting Putin) in 1905 the regime did not fall following the defeat against Japan (humiliating because beaten by a supposedly weaker country) and this despite certain nobles and bourgeois who tried to make things move. it took the disaster of 1917 and the Million deaths for the regime to change and a context favorable to Bolshevism.
During World War II, Russia's toll amounted to at least 13 million dead in civilian casualties alone, but Stalin had two things that Nicholas II did not have: 1) a victory (even a Pyrrhic one), 2) propaganda and brainwashing (something that his spiritual son Putin possesses and masters).
Putin has the advantage (in the eyes of some) of having given Russia its place in the world, certainly the Russian population is more educated, but flattering the ego of the people has always worked and this since antiquity with the Romans, giving victories, bread and games, good for the games in Russia we will come back although with state television we are not far from it + propaganda.
last point and which is cultural, linked precisely to the fierce repression both during the time of the tsars and under the dear tovaritchs and which Putin has perpetuated recently with NAVALNY in particular, culturally the basic Russian population has integrated the fact that "he who is right is the strongest and that if you do not want to stay "alive" do not get involved in subjects of power, stay in your place" hence this submission.
the paradigms for a fall of Putin, would be a war that gets bogged down and a succession of lost battles with significant losses (like WWI) associated with an economic crisis such that the resources of petrodollars and current cash inflows cannot stem a fall in the economy.
Only those who have nothing left to lose revolt, as long as Putin maintains the illusion and the people eat their last (a bit like with us with the RSA in short) nothing will change, the proof is the death of NAVALNY, unfortunately did not provoke a revolution and the revolt of the mothers of Russian soldiers was controlled by the television farce orchestrated by propaganda, any discordant voice is systematically made inaudible.