Putin orders Russian army to expand to become the world’s second largest

The Kremlin said Tuesday that an order by President Vladimir Putin to transform Russia’s army into the second largest in the world was needed to address growing threats on Russia’s western borders and instability to the east.

Putin on Monday ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make it the second largest in the world after China’s.

“This is due to the number of threats that exist to our country along the perimeter of our borders,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

“It is caused by the extremely hostile environment on our western borders and instability on our eastern borders. This demands appropriate measures to be taken.”

According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading military think tank, such an increase would see Russia leapfrog the United States and India in terms of the number of active combat soldiers it has at its disposal and be second only to China in size.

The move, the third time Putin has expanded the army’s ranks since sending his military into Ukraine in February 2022, comes as Russian forces push forward in eastern Ukraine on parts of a vast 1,000 km (627-mile) frontline and try to eject Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region.

Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defense committee, said Monday that part of the rationale for the expansion was to set up new structures and military units to improve security in the north-west of Russia after neighboring Finland joined the NATO alliance.

Russia has also expressed concerns about what it describes as the growing U.S.-backed militarisation of Japan and potential plans to deploy U.S. missiles there.

Although Russia has a population more than three times larger than Ukraine’s and has been successfully recruiting volunteers on lucrative contracts to fight in Ukraine, it has — like Kyiv’s forces — been sustaining heavy battlefield losses, and there is no sign of the war ending anytime soon.

Both sides say the exact size of their losses is a military secret.

Putin since 2022 had previously ordered two official increases in the number of combat troops — by 137,000 and 170,000 respectively.

In addition, Russia mobilized over 300,000 soldiers in September and October 2022 in an exercise which prompted tens of thousands of draft-age men to flee the country.

The Kremlin has said that no new mobilization is planned for now, however, and that the idea is to continue to rely on volunteers signing up to fight in Ukraine.

Dara Massicot, an expert in the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, questioned whether Moscow was ready to foot the bill for the increase in active servicemen.

“There are ways to staff a standing 1.5 million force but the Kremlin will not like them if they are truly grappling with what that requires,” Massicot wrote on X.

“Are they really able to boost the defense budget to sustain procurement AND this requirement?”

Massicot, who has released a report on Russia’s drive to regenerate its army, said Moscow could take the unpopular and difficult decision of expanding the draft size or change the law to allow more women to work in the military to reach such a goal.

“Look for signs that this is a real initiative to recruit and expand, and not a kind of show to intimidate others. The current volunteer method is working but has strains. This (the expansion) means more expense/strain,” she said.