The Russians constantly need more troops to the front. A new mobilization will almost certainly have to be started, but the soldiers’ equipment is something different from today’s.
Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine keep falling, and Russia needs more of them.
– Ukraine is progressing and the power relations are about fifty-fifty. If it continues like this, Russia is slowly losing in terms of men. It is necessary to get more soldiers from somewhere so that collapses or fractures do not occur, says a specialist researcher familiar with the Russian armed forces and military policy Pentti Forsström From the National Defense University.
For this reason, Forsström believes that Russia is organizing a new business launch, even though, for example, the Russian Minister of Defense recently denied this.
Forsström reminds that Russia also denied the need for mobilization last fall, all the way up to the president, but carried it out regardless.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it had about 200,000 troops. Last fall, Russia had to recruit more troops by declaring a “partial mobilization”.
The goal was to bring 300,000 more men from all over Russia to the front. According to the Russians, the goal was successful, but the claim has not been considered credible in the West.
In any case, enough soldiers were gathered that “we were able to stabilize the war and not have to retreat”, Forsström describes. Now, however, more men are needed at the front.
Member of Parliament (council) and former intelligence chief of the General Staff, Major General evp Pekka Toveri estimated to recently that there would be at least around 400,000 soldiers on both sides of the front line in Ukraine.
Russia has a nationwide system of hundreds of recruiting offices, through which both conscripts and reservists pass during peacetime.
According to Forsström, the Russians are trying to reach a service contract with conscripts before their conscript time is over. So they would be made mercenaries.
– The assumption is that the second mobilization will come. However, they have to take into account the upcoming presidential elections. The aim is to keep society at peace in such a way as not to cause turbulence.
The Russian presidential election is scheduled to be held in March 2024.
Even Russia cannot continue recruiting indefinitely
It takes time before the mobilized people can be brought to the front.
– If the mobilization was announced today, it will only start to have an effect next year, maybe in spring or summer. A Russian can think about it quite differently. We just slap on a field suit and a gun, tell them to go and say goodbye, says Forsström.
If and when a new mobilization comes, how can the new troops be equipped?
– Inevitably, the soldiers of the next mobilization will come to the front with substantially older equipment. In terms of night vision, sights and sensor devices, technologically, we are returning to the level of the 1970s and 1980s.
Although Russia’s population is almost 150 million, soldiers cannot be recruited endlessly, Forsström estimates.
– The border is also in Russia. They have a need to mobilize, but to what extent do they dare to do it from the point of view of internal stability? That is certainly what the state leadership and the military leadership are seriously thinking about.
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