The military mobilization decreed this Fourth Fair in Russia, and which the Kremlin insists on saying is partial, may not have effects on the offensive on the ground in no short or medium term, according to a report from the Institute for the Study of War, based in the U.S.
“Putin’s order to mobilize part of Russia’s ‘trained’ reserve, that is, people who have completed their mandatory conscription service, won’t generate significant usable Russian combat power for months”, reads the website of group of experts. “It may be enough to maintain current Russian military levels in 2023, offsetting Russian casualties, but even that is not yet clear.”
Russian accounts point to a total of 300,000 reserve soldiers who could be forced into the ranks of the war, but not without first undergoing a training phase. The institute reminds that there is no confirmation on how many soldiers will have been sent to war in the last seven months – but Ukrainian military officials are targeting 80,000 by June.
Some of these soldiers in the reserve only carried out their compulsory military service for 12 months, without having received an update on their knowledge or on the available military weapons. another part will be reserve soldiers with wartime experience, but these will have already been mobilized in preparation for war.
To begin with, the Russian army in the reserve is poorly trained and does not receive any refresher training once their conscription period ends.
The Institute for the Study of War says that the year of compulsory military service is not even enough for them to learn to be soldiers. And the time they spent without training or refreshing their knowledge only degrades what little they knew.
Thus, the institute provides that training to bring soldiers to the front lines should take weeks or even months.. But a military commissariat in Kursk oblast reportedly said those under 30 would be deployed immediately, without further training.
EITHER group of experts It also rules out that the incorporation of new soldiers changes the course of the war. First, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the incorporation will be carried out in stages, so there will be no massive reinforcements at the front. Subsequently, this military mobilization will be unable to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Partial military mobilization was one of the points in Vladimir Putin’s speech on Wednesday, the others being the annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territory and the use of weapons of mass destruction. The institute clarifies, however, that although the use of the three arguments in the same speech gives the idea of connection, the The Russian president never makes that call openly – and you can always claim you didn’t say that.
Putin’s speech should not be read as an explicit threat that Russia would use nuclear weapons against Ukraine if Ukraine continued counter-offensives in the occupied territories after annexation.” group of experts.
Finally, the report’s authors say that in fact, there is no escalation in the Kremlin’s rhetoricsince Putin’s threats and attacks on NATO are the same since the beginning of the war and have been used repeatedly to justify the invasion.
Source: Observadora
