Russia will struggle to recruit 400,000 volunteers for war in Ukraine, CNN reports
Those mobilized to the Russian army wait for departure on the station platform in occupied Sevastopol, November 2022 (Photo:REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak)
Western officials believe that Moscow is struggling with building up new combat-ready military units, with no clear path to fulfilling the plan to attract 400,000 volunteers into service, CNN reported on April 5.
CNN’s sources note that Russia has recently extended the usual semi-annual military draft and widened the range of eligible ages. However, it is not yet clear whether the population will be able to withstand another wave of mobilization and “whether the Kremlin actually wants to test the population's resilience to that.”
“Russia has acknowledged that they needed 400,000 more troops and that's not just for the conflict (in Ukraine), but also to fulfil new formations which are going to be put on the new border with NATO and Finland,” the officials stated.
“How they generate that is unclear at the moment.”
According to the officials, Russia is experiencing difficulties with military personnel training.
“We've seen Russian units been trained in Belarus, we've seen other Russian localized forces being pushed straight into the front with no training whatsoever,” they said.
Earlier, UK intelligence reported that Russia is unlikely to be able to mobilize 400,000 men. They said that Moscow supposedly chose to draft them as “volunteers” to minimize internal dissent.
In September 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin announced a "partial mobilization" in Russia, drafting 318,000 people into military service by November.
Russian independent media reports suggested that the Russian authorities mobilized as many as 520,000 men for the war against Ukraine since September 2022, despite official claims.
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