Vladimir Putin is facing the humiliating prospect of not hitting a key target for 1.5m soldiers in Russia’s army because too many troops are dying on the front line in Ukraine.
The Russian absolute leader signed off a Kremlin decree this week to increase his army strength by an additional 180,000 service personnel with an aim to reach one-and-a-half million by December this year.
It’s the third similar such decree Putin has approved since his illegal invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
But according to intelligence from the UK Ministry of Defence “despite the intended intent to expand its force, it is likely this ambition will be hampered by continued heavy losses sustained in the conflict against Ukraine”.
The MoD added that Russian generals also faced “recruitment challenges” finding servicemen and women willing to be sent to take part in the Ukraine invasion, which is still dubbed a “Special Military Operation” by the Kremlin.
The 1.5 million target has still yet to be reached the MoD said, despite being hailed as the goal by the then Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as early as the start of the war in 2022.
The MoD reports Russia has likely lost around 610,000 military personnel, either killed or wounded, since the invasion began, with recruitment levels dropping year-on-year.
Last week new Russian recruits were photographed in the Rostov region bordering Ukraine undergoing training to fire upon aerial threats such as drones, which have been used to great affect by Ukrainian forces.
Putin will be hoping his latest recruitment drive masks another military setback in the war this week which saw Ukrainian special forces strike a key ammunitions depot 300 miles inside Russia from the border.
Ukraine claimed a strike on Wednesday destroyed Russian military warehouses in Toropets, a town in Russia’s Tver region about 240 miles northwest of Moscow.
The blast from the explosion was so large it was reportedly visible from satellites and picked up by several international earthquake monitoring agencies.
It’s reported North Korean-supplied KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles were among the ordnance destroyed in an audacious attack carried out by more than 100 Ukrainian-made kamikaze drones.
