The Russian military is struggling to recruit amid the conflict with Ukraine, seeking volunteers even from prisons, to the point where new recruits are often “old, shabby and poorly trained,” a senior Pentagon official said Monday. .
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week ordered an increase in the Russian military by 10%, or about 137,000 troops by January 2023.
But “this effort is unlikely to be successful,” the official, who requested anonymity, told reporters, explaining that the Russian military has historically struggled to meet its recruitment targets.
New recruits “old, shabby and poorly trained”
The United States estimates that the strength of the Russian army was 150,000 short of the stated goal of 1 million men in February 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has tried to send professional soldiers instead of conscripts to the front, but the conflict is costly in terms of human and material resources.
“Russia has already started recruiting more to form at least one volunteer battalion per district and form a Third Army Corps,” he said. “They did this by removing the age limit for new recruits and also by recruiting prisoners.”
“We were able to observe that many of these new recruits were old, in poor shape and poorly trained,” he concluded. “All this suggests that the new recruits that Russia may attract by the end of the year will not strengthen the fighting power” of the country.
After failing to take Kyiv at the start of the intervention, Russian forces are now concentrating their efforts in eastern and southern Ukraine, where the front lines have moved little in recent weeks. The Kremlin has so far refrained from proceeding with a general mobilization, a move feared by many Russians.
Source: BFM TV
