What’s left of the Russian army? While the partial mobilization has started in Russia, and which could reach 300,000 men, many questions arise, in particular about the different protest movements across the country. and that many Russians are fleeing the country.
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Thus, on Monday, September 26, the Kremlin admitted “errors“during the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in Ukraine.”There are cases where the decree has been violated“, said the Kremlin spokesman, saying he hoped that “errors will be corrected“. He further indicated that the authorities had not “decision makingconcerning the closing of borders to men of military age.
However, this announcement by Vladimir Putin puts the key question of the state of the Russian army and its armament back on the table. Beyond the nuclear threat brandished by the Kremlin, the equipment available to Russia to wage this war is still powerful, but not unlimited. Thus, the number one problem of the Russian army in Ukraine: finding enough shells to feed the massive artillery fire against the Ukrainian positions. According to former officer Pierre Grasser, associate researcher at the Sorbonne’s SIRICE laboratory, Russia is seeking to recover stocks of ex-Soviet shells in Central Asia.
At the same time, the Kremlin would be in negotiations with North Korea and would have incidentally used Chinese ammunition: “Russia fires a lot of large caliber shells, especially 152 mm. The war was supposed to be short, it is not, so Russia borrows from its stocks and does not produce enough to replenish them perfectly. In addition, many of these stocks were destroyed by Ukrainian strikes. Technically, Russia is not short of weapons but is running out of ammunition“, details the specialist at the microphone of franceinfo.
In addition, thousands of Russian tanks have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. But Moscow has considerable stocks of them dating from the Soviet Union. According to Pierre Grasser, the Russian army thus manages to gradually replace the old T72s lost in combat. The production or maintenance of more modern equipment is however difficult, due to the embargo on electronic components. Finally, the Russian air force no longer intervenes in the theater of operations, because it is too vulnerable to the formidable surface-to-air missiles supplied by the West.
On Wednesday, September 21, the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Choigou, evokes 5,937 deaths within the army of Vladimir Poutine. This figure is disputed in particular by the American authorities, who advance figures of 70,000 to 80,000 Russian soldiers rushed.