Preliminary
Since the "Wagner Incident" in 2023, the shortcomings of Russia's local defense have emerged. At a critical moment when the Russian army was engaged in internal strife, a unit was able to penetrate directly into Moscow, attracting international attention.
The same was true of the Kursk Incident last year. Ukraine launched a surprise attack in the direction of Kursk, which caused the unsuspecting Russian army to suffer a great loss.
Russia recently introduced a policy that allowed Putin’s “right to deploy” to occur a qualitative change, and the future Russian army may not repeat the same.
Putin revealed at the meeting in mid-September that there are now more than 700,000 Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian front. To know that the total number of Russian troops after multiple expansion is about 1.3 million, there is also a large number of logistics and civilian personnel, which is equivalent to saying that the soldiers who can fight are basically all up.
The Wagner incident exposed not only the shortage of troops, but also the problems within the army. When Prigozhin started the trouble, he accused the Ministry of National Defense of not providing weapons and ammunition. Later, it even involved corruption in defense procurement-expired individual soldier rations, inferior body armor, and reserve tanks with dismantled parts. These scandals caused The morale of the front line was greatly affected.
By 2024, Putin simply replaced the defense minister, removed Shaoigu from his 12 year tenure, and captured a number of senior generals suspected of corruption, such as Deputy Defense Minister Ivanov, Lieutenant Shamarin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the General Staff.
Because these vulnerabilities are clear, Russia has recently made a hard-working adjustment, the core is to give the president's dispatch right to "insurance", while pulling out the hidden reserve. The reserve recruitment bill passed yesterday, directly with the law to kill the rules: the president in the armed conflict, anti-terrorism or overseas use of soldiers, the right to directly call the reserve to carry out national defense tasks.
Following the signing of the order by Putin last month, the number of active Russian troops has almost reached 1.5 million, and according to Russian army general Zhulaev, there are now about 2 million contractual reservists.
These 2 million people are not random "strong men". As early as 2014, Russia restored the reserve system. Most of these people are retired soldiers. After signing contracts, they have to participate in monthly training and conduct exercises every year to be able to go to the battlefield at any time. In 2021, a reserve force of 38,000 people was even specially established in the Southern Military Region, and later sent to the Donbas area. It has been tested in actual combat.
Some people may ask, why should we pay attention to these 2 million reserves when there are already 1.5 million active soldiers? There is an account to settle here. The 700,000 combat troops on the front line already account for most of the active combat forces. If there is another trouble like Wagner in the rear, or if Ukraine launches more raids, no one can withstand it.
And the Russian Ukrainian battlefield is very consumed, tanks and cannons are lost faster than the production speed, many equipment can beined by the renovation of the Soviet stockpiles, and the supplementation of front-line soldiers is more necessary. this 2 million reserves, even if only a part is called, can both fill the front-line troop shortage, and can fill the "hole" of the back defense, which is equivalent to the Russian army on double insurance.
In order to make these reserves really come in handy, Russia has also carried out supporting actions. Military recruitment in the autumn of 2024 will begin using the national unified military service registration system. Citizens' residential addresses, health status, and professional skills are all recorded in it. Those who want to recruit military experience can be checked accurately.
In addition, the age of recruitment from 27 years old to 30 years old, it is also dedicated to IT industry personnel to leave the policy of delaying service, ensuring both the source and not affecting the key industries. These details can be seen, this expansion is not blind, it is a long planned systemic reform.
The push of 2 million reserves to the forefront this time is essentially a major shift in the structure of Russia's military power-it used to be "focusing on regular troops and light reserves", but now it will be changed to "coordinated efforts by regular troops and reserves."
This is not a minor adjustment. The trajectory can be seen from the actions in the past two years: partial mobilization will be carried out for the first time in September 2022, and 300,000 reserve soldiers will be recruited; In December 2023, another military expansion order was signed, raising the armed forces to more than 2.2 million people; Up to now, the legal status of the reserve service has been clarified, and the reserve force has been helped to become the "main force" step by step.
Behind this transformation is the "bloodstone" of Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. to know, Russia has fought a lot of battles since the Second World War, from the war in Afghanistan to the war in Chechnya, never as hardly as now to put up national forces.
Previously, the battle was fierce again, the regular army support front is enough, the top of the reserve is more "reserve army", but this time is not the same, the front line is too heavy, does not put the final bottom card out, the situation is not stable at all.
More importantly, this reform still hides the idea of "cleaning up the interior". Belousov, the newly appointed Defense Minister, is an economist, not a traditional military general, which itself speaks volumes-Putin wants not only "more people", but also "money spent wisely".
Before the defense spending a lot, but corruption eaten the majority of the military spending, now the technical bureaucracy of the defense, is to make the procurement, equipment, salary these links smooth, so that every penny can become the frontline combat force. for example, after Berlusov took office, the Russian drone production capacity was quickly mentioned, which is the direct expression of efficiency improvement.
Of course, there are also risks to do so. 2 million reserves are said to be "the bottom", in fact it is also the "last card", once it is put into play, it is difficult to want to supplement the military resources. And to extract so many people from the civilian, how much will affect the economic operation, after all, Russia is now on top of Western sanctions, people's livelihoods and military industry have to take care of. but from the current situation, Russia has no way back - if not to take the strength of the country to stabilize the battlefield, the price paid before would be in vain.
From Vagner’s breaches, to the bill’s clear authority, to the two million reserves waiting, this series of operations, Russia has put the “treasure” in military reform. Regardless of the final outcome, this comprehensive adjustment from the structure of forces to internal management is enough to demonstrate their determination to end the conflict.
Reference: Russian media: Putin signs autumn conscription order
Putin: All objectives of Ukraine’s special military operation must be fulfilled unconditionally
Putin: More than 700,000 Russian soldiers fight on the front line in Ukraine