Russian President Vladimir Putin announces the partial mobilization of Russia’s military and calls up military reservists in a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine.
Putin announces military mobilization! From midnight on Wednesday (21st), all men between the ages of 18 and 65 will be banned from leaving Russia, waiting for conscription at any time.
General Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia has a potential mobilization capacity of 25 million people, but this time only 300,000 retainers have been mobilized, including those who have served in the military, graduates of military statistics, and those with combat experience. However, it is not yet possible to mobilize university students to go to war.
The task of these 300,000 reserves is to control 1,000 kilometers of fronts and areas now controlled by the Russian army. At the same time, General Shoigu announced: The Russian-Ukrainian special military operation is very arduous, and Russian soldiers are honorably carrying out combat tasks.
Shoigu also made a rare announcement that in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Russian armed forces lost 5937 people, but has eliminated half of the Ukrainian army, of which 61207 died and 49368 were wounded.
Judging from Shoigu’s announcement, the total loss of the Russian army should be about 15,000 people, plus the wounded and captured. If we add to that the roughly 20,000 casualties reported by the open sources, the losses of the Russian coalition forces are about 35,000, not including the Chechen and Wagner mercenary groups.
At the same time, Putin ordered that the Russian military industry must achieve 100% localization and can no longer rely on foreign spare parts to be stuck in the neck! Putin also demanded that the Russian military industry should make every effort to increase production and shorten production time without affecting the quality of weapons and equipment.
From 23 September, the Russian-controlled areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson will be merged into Russia. This means that the territorial negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will fully break down and will not stop until one side is defeated. Which is a direct sign that Russia is going to fight a war. Conscripts and reservists may go to war on the grounds that their domestic territory has been attacked. Russia will expand the scale of the war.
However, partial mobilization does not have an immediate impact on the outcome of the battle, and it takes a certain amount of time from the recruitment, training, arming, and distribution of soldiers. At the same time, it is 2022, not 1942, and these reserves must also have training and equipment in terms of informatization, long-range precision strike, and defense against enemy long-range strikes.
For Russia’s mobilization, Dr. Mike Martin, a visiting researcher at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said that it would take at least 6 months for Russia to turn civilians into soldiers, and this would not solve their weapons and equipment problems, nor their logistical problems.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said Putin’s “mobilization measures” were indicative of Ukraine’s recent success on the battlefield. However, just the day before Putin announced the mobilization, Russian state television said that it invited Strekov to participate in the TV program, the main content of which is to interpret Putin’s TV speech, which requires special attention.
Now, more and more, the Russo-Ukrainian war is beginning to show its original cruel face, the war has its own logic, once launched, its operation has exceeded the subjective will of the participants. And by looking at the both parties i don’t think anyone will surrender easily.
But in any case, it cannot be denied that the Russian army is now facing a serious shortage of troops on the battlefield as well as equipments. It can be said that the pre-backup is the reluctance. The reserve is the first widow.
The current time window of the Ukrainian army is only 3-6 months, and a few months later, hundreds of thousands of Russian reserve troops will enter the battlefield. It is basically very difficult for the Ukrainian army to launch a counterattack that takes advantage of the void. And with the announcement of mobilization by the Russian military, it is foreseeable that in the future, the number of countries joining NATO will increase, and the number of countries pursuing nuclear weapons will also increase.
However, Russia’s military mobilization is still a little late, and in fact it should be mobilized when the attack on Donbass was focused in April. After all, Russia does not have the perfect mobilization mechanism of the Soviet Union, how long it takes for the reserve to be assembled, how long it needs to be trained, what equipment to hold, how long the will can be maintained, where the reserve officers come from, and what logistical guarantees must be solved.