Putin faces uphill struggle to recruit combat troops

RUSSIA’S plans to recruit 137,000 more troops cannot be achieved unless it declares an outright war, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) has said.

Responding to an order from Vladimir Putin last week to boost the size of the Russian army, the Ministry of Defence said “Russia has lost tens of thousands of troops” in Ukraine and even if it boosts conscript numbers they are not obliged to serve outside Russian territory while Moscow insists its presence in Ukraine is a special military operation and not an outright war.

“The decree is unlikely to make substantive progress towards increasing Russia’s combat power in Ukraine,” the MOD said.

Mr Putin did not say why he had

‘Better equipment does not make more effective forces when the personnel are not well trained or disciplined’

ordered an increase of roughly 13 per cent to the size of Russia’s army, to more than 1.15 million, but estimates from US intelligence have said that Russia has suffered around 75,000 dead or injured in six months of war.

Russia has been trying to recruit volunteers for its army over the past three months, targeting cities including Moscow and St Petersburg, but Western analysts have said that the quality of recruits varies enormously.

The Us-based Institute for the Study of War said that it expected the Kremlin to soon deploy one of these new battalions, the 3rd Army Corps, to Donbas in the east and Kherson in the south, but that its troops may struggle in battle.

“Better equipment does not necessarily make more effective forces when the personnel are not well-trained or disciplined, as many members of the 3rd Army Corps’ volunteer units are not,” it said.