Are the numbers of the French army paltry compared to those of Russia?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon implied in a tweet that the French army is no match for the Russians. He assures that “20,000 soldiers were recruited into the army in one month according to the general. Reminder: the Russian army has 1.32 million soldiers.” The former presidential candidate thus underlines the immense gap between the two armies, but is this comparison relevant?

First, Jean-Luc Mélenchon takes two figures of a different nature: 20,000 is the mobilization capacity of the army alone in one month, 1.32 million is the number of active soldiers in Russia . If we take the equivalent figure, on the French side, it is 200,000.

Different objectives

The gap remains present and is explained in particular by very different military objectives according to François Heisbourg, army specialist: “France has an army that corresponds to expeditionary objectives, the capacity to send soldiers to distant places while Russia has an army made to occupy its own territory and the territory of its neighbors.”
Russian troops increased sharply with the war in Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of additional conscripts while France reduced its numbers due to a peaceful context.

Comparing the number of soldiers doesn’t make much sense

To measure the power of an army, several criteria must be taken into account, as Alain Cordefy, a former admiral, points out. “We must compare trained and, above all, well-commanded and well-led teams. What makes the Russian army weak is an army without its officers. However, what forms the backbone of armies is the body of its officers, that is to say the middle managers”he explains.