Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Thursday to increase the size of Russia’s armed forces from 1.9 million to 2.04 million as the war in Ukraine enters the seventh month.
Moscow has not reported casualties in the fighting since its first weeks, but Western officials and the Kyiv government say the numbers are in the thousands.
Military expansion includes an increase in the number of fighters from 137,000 to 1.15 million. According to the decree published on the government’s legislative portal, it takes effect on January 1.
The last time Putin determined the size of the Russian army was in November 2017, when the number of fighters was set at 1.01 million of the total strength of the Armed Forces, including non-combatants.
Russia does not say how many casualties it has suffered in Ukraine since the first weeks of the campaign, where it said 1,351 soldiers were killed.
While the real number may be at least 10 times higher, according to Western estimates, Ukraine says it has killed or wounded at least 45,000 Russian soldiers since the conflict began on February 14, which Moscow calls a special military operation.
Kyiv was also reluctant to release information on how many soldiers died in the war, but on Monday the head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said about 9,000 soldiers were killed.
source: Noticias
