Defense minister of the russian federation Sergei Shoigu reported to president Putin on the progress in the creation of new military units and lower-level associations of units within the russian army. He announced there are 114,000 personnel enlisted under contract and 52,000 more so-called "volunteers." Worth noting, this category includes forcibly mobilized prisoners. The "start date" of making up new military formations out of these people he did not mention.
At the same time, Shoigu got the names of army units wrong and said verbatim: "[we are] forming reserves within the army corps, army. Plus on top of that, five regiments in the 1st and 20th tank armies. All according to the plan there: basically, by the end of June we'll complete forming a reserve army and shortly we'll complete forming an army corps."
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Defense Express suggests that he meant the 1st Tank Army and the 20th General Arms Army. He also mentioned an army corps without its number, it may be the 40th Army Corps which is intended specifically for operations in the occupied territories of Ukraine, or the planned new corps for deployment near the 1,300 km border with Finland who has joined NATO recently.
As for the "reserve army," this is the first time Shoigu announces these intentions. It wasn't even in the plans announced by himself in December 2022.
We should as well pay attention to the "average rate" of enlistment of contracted troops into the russian army, it is stated to be 1,336 people a day; russia's defense minister says it's "a regiment per day." Although even the least staffed russian unit, a motor rifle regiment, must have about 2,100 personnel as standard.
That said, 1,300 soldiers equal to roughly three shorthanded motor rifle battalions of 480 to 510 personnel each. These three battalions cannot become a proper regiment as long as they lack a tank battalion which is the only type of unit that wields tanks, as well as artillery support units with howitzers and rocket artillery systems, air defense systems, commanding units, communication units and rear support units of a regiment level.
But certainly, it's still possible that the russian armed forces could review their structure standards in order to increase their number in name only and deliver an optimistic report to their leader.
The defense minister also announced the number of equipment supplied to the five regiments, plus a whole army corps and such a big structure as an army – 3,786 pieces in total; new vehicles' supplies are said to be 112 pieces of equipment a day. Without specifying the types of this equipment, it is difficult to analyze these figures, especially if they don't include various automobile vehicles.
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