Moscow, Russia- Russia’s military troops are set to reach two million in 2023 following a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
The order, which will come into effect on 1 January 2023, includes a 137 000 rise in the number of combat personnel to 1.15 million.
However, Putin didn’t explain how the military will beef up its ranks and whether this would be through more conscriptions, more volunteer soldiers or a combination of both.
Regions across Russia have started to form volunteer battalions, offering lucrative short-term contracts to men aged between 18 and 60. Western intelligence has also said private military companies, including the Wagner group, are being used to reinforce Russia’s frontline forces.
In November 2017, Putin fixed the size of the number of combat personnel in Russia’s army to 1.01 million from a total armed forces headcount, including non-combatants, of 1.9 million.
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbas Republics as independent States and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc.
Russia sent its troops to Ukraine citing its failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian State. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014.
Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kyiv’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and create powerful armed forces.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday its forces used an Iskander missile to strike a military train in Chaplyne, a town of about 3 500 residents in the central Dnipropetrovsk region that was carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment to the front line in eastern Ukraine adding that the Ministry claimed more than 200 reservists were destroyed on their way to the combat zone.
Hours before the train station attack, Russia insisted it was doing its best to spare civilians, even at a cost of slowing down its offensive in Ukraine.
However, Aleksey Danilov, Ukraine’s National Security Council, said they have been gearing up for hostilities with Russia since as early as December 2019.
“We were actually preparing for the war from December 2019, and all the claims that we were not dealing with it are absolutely out of touch with reality. If we did not prepare for war, today Russian tanks would be in Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn and Vilnius,” said Danilov.
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