Julia Shapero — The Hill Jan 17, 2023
The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday detailed its plans to expand the Russian armed forces over the next few years, aiming to reach 1.5 million soldiers by 2026.
The expansion of the armed forces, initially announced in December, will occur over several years, from 2023 to 2026, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS. Russia had previously ordered a troop increase from 137,000 to 1.15 million in August.
The plans come as Russia has faced numerous setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Kremlin mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists late last year in a bid to turn the tide of the war it still calls a “special military operation.”
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced two new military districts will also be formed in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and an army corps will be created in the Republic of Karelia along Russia’s border with Finland, The Wall Street Journal reported. The focus on Karelia comes after both Finland and Sweden have sought to join NATO.
Russia also aims to increase “the combat capabilities of the Navy, the Aerospace Forces and the Strategic Rocket Forces,” TASS reported.
“Only by strengthening the key structural components of the Armed Forces is it possible to guarantee the military security of the state and protect new entities and critical facilities of the Russian Federation,” Shoigu said, according to Reuters.
The Kremlin justified the buildup by pointing to what it deemed as the West’s “proxy war” against Russia, in an apparent reference to the vast financial and military support that Western nations have provided to Ukraine in the nearly 11 months since Russia launched its invasion.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov specifically noted the West’s “indirect involvement in military activities and elements of an economic war, a financial war, legal warfare, steps that go beyond the legal field and so on,” according to TASS.
Since launching its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has been forced to focus its on-the-ground forces largely on battles in the east, after initially launching attacks on the capital city of Kyiv.
Last week, the Kremlin claimed that it had seized the small salt mining town of Soledar in a rare but costly win for Russia.
However, Ukrainian forces have managed to gain territory in several regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed last fall, including the major city of Kherson, and have continued to defend the strategic city of Bakhmut in the east despite months of heavy Russian attacks.
These plans have little to do with the actual war in UKraine.
There will be more borders to defend after the war has been won. Russia plans to increase its forces along the Finnish border, if Finland joins NATO or not, and Russia is increasing its Arctic bases and manpower.
So The Hill is as usual, over the hill on this one.
As a fairly middling old chap, I wonder why virtually all the rags who get their articles published on here are ultra right-wing, and usually backed by the US, and UK deep state, or they are funded by spurious sources, a couple are Redacted, and 21st Century Wire, and there are many others.
Oh sure, they appear to be caring operations, but their core lines of attack are from the hard right. They simply can’t say what they really think. It must be packaged for thicko sheeple consumption.
Take members of the UK Nazi Party, and I include Labour Nazis as well. If you were to lie detector test them all, and use truth serums, you’d be totally shocked by the results.
Just yesterday an MP actually said: ‘I don’t have a strong opinion on that.’ Well, I can tell you now, she’s a fecking liar. What she means, is that her real views aren’t fit for thicko sheeple’s ears, and that’s the fact.
Take Megan Markle, she’s an actor, so you’ve no way to know what her ture position is on anything. What she says is hardly ever backed up by actions, and any so called good causes are just strings to her bow.
This is the same for anyone in the public eye. They are actors. Take Boris’s bumbling routine, it’s an act that thicko sheeple believe is real. There are terrible political actors, such as Gavin Williamson. These muppets lack the skills, they can’t shut their mouths. Take Prince William. He was asked the other day if he’d read ‘Spare’, he ignored the public question. He lacks skills. He should have retorted: ‘I will read it at some point, but I have a few hundred books to read first.” It is an answer, and it is ambiguous. Many skilled political actors use these kind of retorts.
The reality is that there’s no left, there’s no real socialism, and even the shocking Guardian is backed by big bank advertising, because it pumps out a fake left leaning pile of dog crap.
I honestly can’t think of any news, or alternative news platform that’s middle, or even left of center.
Like Blair used to boast about his and Bush’s plan for illegal war in Iraq, if you want peace sometimes you must plan for war. In the case of Russia’s 1.5 million men army this probably really is a plan for peace.
What fine looking white Slavic-Aryan Warriors in the picture above.
Let’s hope they wipe out the evil and toxic Khazarian scum like Zelenski, Nicox and their kind for good this time.
Sign me up for that unit.
Putin, spare your white folk and better
boost your missile production !
this will be a missile war .no trench, no
tank war . that was once upon a time .
The word ‘nazi’ is meant to denote National Socialist; I fail to see anything ‘National’ about the Westminster Parties.
They all echo Rothschild’s comment in the 1930s that by 2000 the UK would be de facto communist but it wouldn’t be called that.
Peter Dul: yes Peter, you keep your blinkers on and stick to the terms & conditions planted in your narrow mind.
@PETER DULL
to lure innocent trusting people into
fraudulent jewish poison vaccines +
to import masses of unskilled foreign
parasites and discriminating rights,
culture, identity of the original white
aryan natives + censorship is unequivocally
COMMUNIST POLITICS in whole
west europa !
they maybe fascist plutocrates but do
communist ways since for jews fascism +
communism/socialism/feminism is all
the same .
Those soldiers in the photo at the top looks like a costume review at a gay cabaret. All they are missing are rainbow flags sticking out of the rifle muzzles. Seriously, they look rather soft to me…but hard for each other.