Eurasia Press & News
Moscow has to figure out how to replenish unprecedented losses in just under three months of fighting.
As Russian forces continue to take significant battlefield losses in Ukraine, the Kremlin is struggling to plug the gap as Russian President Vladimir Putin remains reluctant to call for a full-scale military mobilization.
British military intelligence estimates that Russia has lost one-third of the ground combat forces it had gathered ahead of its invasion as Moscow’s forces have been bedeviled by both their own operational shortcomings and a fierce Ukrainian resistance, backed by sophisticated Western weapons. The U.S. Defense Department has not seen evidence of a mass Russian mobilization so far, officials said. But as Russia is trying to throw more forces into the fight, it is sometimes bringing in combat groups at less than full strength, including units that took losses in their failed effort to capture the capital, Kyiv.
In lieu of a mass mobilization campaign, which is likely to prove unpopular, Russia has cobbled together reinforcements by redeploying troops from occupied territories in Georgia, bringing in mercenaries from Syria, recruiting civilians in occupied regions in the Donbas, and coercing soldiers to stay on the battlefield by dangling financial incentives at new recruits. Ukrainian officials and lawmakers have also noticed Russia taking less experienced troops from more far-flung areas, such as the easternmost Russian port city of Vladivostok, instead of using elite units that suffered severe casualties in the beginning of the war. And the Pentagon believes that the paramilitary Wagner Group is active in the Donbas region.
