Peter Lidén at the Swedish National Defense College, who was Sweden’s defense attaché to Ukraine for four years, mentions two reasons why Russia is now making such a decision. On the one hand, the country wants access to a broader base in terms of capabilities and experience, and on the other hand, Russia has had tangible losses so far in the war and needs to replenish more soldiers numerically:
– The Russian military needs to have access to more volunteer personnel to avoid going to mobilizations with all that would mean in the form of actually having to declare war. Since then, despite the exact figures and the uncertainties contained in such assessments, the Russian side has had very large and tangible losses, says Peter Lidén.
Peter Lidén points out that on the Ukrainian side since 2014 there has been a large influx of volunteers and support from voluntary organizations and purely non-profit interests, not least when it comes to logistics. This while the Russian army is relied on to rely on the military personnel it has been able to recruit, even in terms of logistics functions.
However, there is a difference concerning the units on the Russian-led side that come from the two self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in Donbass, which have mobilized and now almost literally take “people from the street” and send them to the fighting. According to Peter Lidén, these units are handled carelessly by their Russian commanders and have suffered disproportionately large losses, also in relation to the high loss figures that the Russian units themselves have had.
There are already signs that the Russian army has taken in retired personnel. A few days ago could BBC confirm that the 63-year-old Russian Major General Kanamat Botashev was shot down by a Ukrainian stinger robot when Botashev performed a flight over the Luhanso area. Botashev died when he did not have time to jump from his Su-25.
During Wednesday comes also new information about the murder of Ukrainian civilians when prosecutors in Kyiv published the names of eight people now suspected of war crimes. Five of them are Russian soldiers, two Belarusian mercenaries and a mercenary from the so-called Wagner group.
According to Ukraine, Russian troops continue to build up their forces in the Cherson region, north of the Crimean peninsula, and use vanguards dressed in Ukrainian military uniforms to attempt to enter Ukrainian-controlled territory.
“But every such attack has been repulsed and the enemy has suffered losses and withdrawn,” the head of the press of Ukraine’s southern military command told Ukrainian Interfax.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Speaking at a digital breakfast meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Zelenskyj stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not want to see an end to the war:
– The only positive thing has been that we started talking about how the situation in Azovstal would be resolved and how civilians would be evacuated. But since then I have not seen any new steps in that direction, in Zelensky.
On Wednesday, Russia rejected a draft peace plan put forward by Italy as “fantasies”:
“You can not provide Ukraine with weapons with one hand and then present a peace plan with the other,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. Reuters.