Putin supports plans for Russia to expand its armed forces to 1.5 million combat personnel

Vladimir Putin has supported a plan to expand the size of Russia’s armed forces – and learn from the problems his nation has suffered during the Ukraine conflict.

Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu had proposed beefing up the armed forces to 1.5 million combat personnel from 1.15 million.

In a conference of Russia’s leading military officials, Mr Shoigu said such a move was required “to guarantee the solving of problems related to Russia’s military security”.

He said 695,000 of the fighters should be professional contracted soldiers – as opposed to conscripts serving mandatory military service.

Mr Shoigu also said Russia will form new units in the country’s west in view of plans by Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

During the summer, Mr Putin had signed a decree ordering troop numbers to be increased by 137,000 from the beginning of 2023 to reach the 1.15 million level.

He has also drafted more than 300,000 reservists in a controversial mobilisation drive to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The US and other international military analysts have said tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have already died in the 10 months since Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Mr Putin said Moscow will use the combat experience to enhance its armed forces.

He told military leaders to analyse the Western weapons used by Ukraine to “develop our armed forces and strengthen the capability of our troops”.

He said the country’s military should learn lessons and modernise based on its experiences in Ukraine and special emphasis will go to developing his country’s nuclear forces, which he described as “the main guarantee of Russia’s sovereignty”.

Moscow correspondent

Whatever you need, we’ll get you. That was, in a nutshell, what Vladimir Putin promised his troops today.

He’d heard the criticism about supplies – some of it legitimate, some of it “emotional”, he said – and he’d make sure the armed forces learned from their experiences and lacked for nothing going forward.

That even extends to every serviceman having access to drones – an interesting nod to the pervasive role drones are playing in Ukraine, in combat and intelligence, on a scale not yet seen in modern warfare.

Whether all that support materialises is a completely different story.

Corruption has long been endemic in Russia’s armed forces, part of the reason the last few months have seen regular citizens forking out huge sums for kit like body armour and tourniquets for their mobilised relatives.

This “special military operation”, as Putin still insisted on calling it, has shown that the Russian armed forces just aren’t quite the high-tech, ultra-modern army he’d made them out to be.

His factories are on overdrive and extra supply is coming from the likes of Iran, North Korea and Belarus.

Sanctions are making things harder on the defence side, even if Russia is good at finding workarounds.

Saying you’ll have anything money can buy isn’t the same as delivering it. But it does show he has no intention of giving up.

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