russian defense ministry has detailed the plans on increasing the number of personnel in military service to 1.5 million people. The plan was announced in December last year by minister Shoigu during his yearly summary report.
According to the russian media, this plan was approved by president putin himself, and it will enter into force during the 2023-2026 period. Simply put, it will be a gradual increase over the next three years. But in this situation most important is the fact that Shoigu declared the increase of contract military personnel from 521,000 to 695,000.
Read more: Russia Expanding Army to 1.5 Million People
This means that the increase in overall staff of the russian army will be achieved by raising the conscription rates. While in 2021 there was was about 250,000 conscripts in the russian military, now they intend to take about 800,000 conscripts for obligatory military service.
Simultaneously, the russians are talking about raising the term of service under conscription from one to two years and shifting the age census from 18-27 to 21-30 years.
We should note that the russian federation has never been able to achieve the number of 800,000 conscripts so far. In 1991, the figure reached 467,000 by inertia from the Soviet times, in 2007 it fell to 266,000, and the record-high numbers were in 2009-2010 with 576,000 and 549,000 conscripts respectively. Although in 2010, the russian military already tried to take up 700 to 800 thousand young men, but did not manage to make it happen.
In this manner, the Kremlin is actually considering transforming its armed forces into a copy of the Soviet Army which was based on conscripted servicemen. Though in this case it's not about permanent staff in service but a possibility to quickly raise a great number of personnel during mobilization. Because the conscription model was developed with the idea to create a stable reserve of manpower.
And with these new changes to the russian military, a force of 800,000 people will be graduated into the military reserve on an annual basis and become potential human resource for mobilization.
Read more: Even 600 Thousand Conscripts Will Not Save From Losing the War, And China Showed It In 1979
