Putin is embarking on an aggressive hiring drive to rejuvenate Russia's army. But he can't sustain it, experts say.
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan,Mia Jankowicz | September 18, 2024 | 10:59 AM CDT- Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian army to increase its troop size by 180,000.
- The increase would make Russia's army the second largest in the world, behind only China's.
- Experts told BI the expansion is hard to resource and could come at the expense of Russia's economy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to grow his country's armed forces, but experts say his ambitions could come at the expense of Russia's economy.
On Monday, Putin ordered the army to increase its troops by 180,000, per a decree published by the Kremlin.
This will raise the overall number of Russian military personnel to 2.38 million people, with 1.5 million of them being active soldiers.
The expansion, which will take effect in December, would give Russia the world's second-largest army, behind only China and ahead of the US and India, per Reuters, which cited data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
This isn't the first time Putin has sought to expand the army since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian leader ordered an increase of 137,000 troops in August 2022, followed by an increase of 170,000 in December 2023.
Nick Reynolds, a land warfare research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the increase is consistent with Russia's ongoing war planning.
In February, Reynolds coauthored a commentary that suggested that 2025 would be a make-or-break year for Russia. Russia believes it can sustain current troop and equipment losses through 2025, with the belief that "victory should be achieved by 2026," they wrote.
That's not implausible if Ukraine's Western allies don't keep supporting it, they added. But after 2026, Russia will begin to run out of existing stocks of tanks and armored fighting vehicles and will have to rely on producing new ones.
The gear coming off the production line "will still be substantial," Reynolds told BI in an interview on Wednesday. "Just significantly less than they are now."
That raises the question of how Russia can resource its even bigger army when it is already stretched.
"Where are the resources going to come from? How is the recruitment going to work?" Reynolds said . . .
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-orders-russia-army-expand-experts-cannot-do-this-forever-2024-9
