The Russian government assures that it is not considering renewed mobilization for the entrenched invasion of Ukraine, but at the same time paves the way for an increase in the army. The Russian Defense Ministry wants to have as many civilians as possible available and from the end of next year will exclude “those diseases that do not have a significant impact on the military performance” of the person as a reason for conscription for military service. Which ones are not specified. Following the same goal, President Vladimir Putin has ordered an increase in the theoretical personnel of the armed forces – figures that do not necessarily correspond to the actual strength of the army – to 2.2 million personnel.
Casualties and fatigue are mounting on the front and Russia will need more men as the war drags on, as predicted by the Kremlin, which warns of an increase in “threats against Russia” related to the “special military operation”. [nombre oficial de la invasión de Ucrania] and the ongoing expansion of NATO.” Moscow asserts that nothing has changed in the original war aims.
“The special military operation will continue. “Our economy has adapted and provides the necessary framework for its continued existence,” warned Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday, after emphasizing that the Kremlin was waiting for the West to abandon Kiev to its fate. “It is clear that it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to spend money on the bottomless Ukrainian barrel,” the senior official said.
A third of the Russian budget is earmarked for military spending (40% if other security chapters are included), and Moscow is not satisfied with the Ukrainian territory it has occupied so far. “We see no reason why our goals should be reviewed,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov replied last Friday when asked about the lack of movement on the front lines at the latest OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) summit.
According to the British Ministry of Defense, Russian forces have suffered similar or greater attrition in their offensive on Avdiivka (in eastern Ukraine) over the past two months than in the Battle of Bakhmut earlier this year. Nevertheless, the Kremlin claims to have everything under control. The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and the country’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said over the weekend that the army had hired more than 452,000 people this year. He did not provide any information as to whether this number includes the integration of mercenaries and volunteers from groups such as Wagner, which the Ministry of Defense has ordered since July.
Health reasons were among the main accusations among young Russians trying to escape the first major mobilization in September 2022, when more than 300,000 civilians were called up. The Ministry of Defense now points out in its draft decree that it has taken note of “the experience gained” in Ukraine. This recruitment was chaotic and there were thousands of complaints from those mobilized. Although Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that only those with military experience who were part of the reserve would be called up, this was not specified in the mobilization decree and there were cases in recruiting centers where attempts were made to force people to serve. in Ukraine to civilians who had a medical certificate that was supposed to exempt them.
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Proposal to expand the military
Reducing the list of diseases exempt from conscription will not only facilitate the mobilization of civilians, but also extend to the recruitment of professional military personnel and the annual conscription of young people for military service. In fact, some Russian lawmakers have proposed extending military service up to two years in order to have more troops available. Andrei Guruliov, deputy, lieutenant general and member of the State Duma Defense Committee, has also proposed abolishing study centers to encourage the entry of Russians into the armed forces, since participation in training serves to delay military service. mandatory.
Putin is also preparing an army that can counter NATO in the medium term. Last Friday, the Kremlin issued a decree changing the maximum number of members of the armed forces, increasing it to 2.2 million members, including 1.3 million potential combatants. This is not the first time that Russia is changing this border: the president already did so in 2000 and 2010 when he reformed the disproportionate military structure inherited from the USSR, and he did so again in August 2022 by changing the border 130,000 troops increased six months after the invasion of Ukraine began after it was seen that it would drag on.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the review of the theoretical dimension of the armed forces “is due to the increasing threats against Russia in the context of the special military operation and the ongoing expansion of NATO.” Added to the hardships suffered on the battlefields of Ukraine are the incorporation of Finland and its more than 1,300-kilometer-long border with Russia into the alliance in April this year, as well as the future accession of Sweden, the final approval of which is still pending by Turkey and Hungary.
More police raids
Another indication of possible short-term mobilization is that Russian police have increased raids on mosques, markets and factories in recent months to recruit potential recruits among immigrants with dual nationality. The target is those from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, who make up the majority of the migrant community in Russia. After obtaining citizenship, some of them did not issue another mandatory document, the so-called military ticket, a document with which the Ministry of Defense has the profile of potential recruits.
Last August, more than a hundred workers at a vegetable market in St. Petersburg were arrested and taken to a training center to complete this process. “To take advantage of this opportunity to further educate Russians,” the police said in their statement to immigrants, “citizenship confers not only rights but also duties, including the constitutional obligation to perform military service.”
Such records have occurred in recent weeks at one of the country’s largest logistics companies, Wildberries, an alternative to Amazon in Russia. The latest incident occurred last weekend at a warehouse in the Tula region, south of Moscow, where a dozen employees were held “for a routine check of documents as part of military recruitment,” the company reportedly made light of. In late November, more than 8,000 Wildberries employees were forced to stop work for several hours after learning of the first raid, in which more than 40 workers were taken from the communal dormitory where they lived to the recruiting center.
Another infamous case occurred last October when Mamut Useinov, star of a popular television singing competition, was arrested in a Moscow mosque. According to his version, he was put on a bus with others and held for hours in a recruiting center. “I was forcibly taken away, my documents were illegally confiscated and I had no opportunity to appeal or report my illnesses and beliefs,” he lamented on his personal Instagram account. “They told us we had to sign a contract for one year, otherwise we would go to prison,” Useinov added. According to him, several of those arrested agreed to join the army.
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