One of the main problems that the Russian army faced during the special operation in Ukraine was a severe shortage of manpower. The consolidation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the NM of the LDNR involved in the conduct of the NMD was not enough for a huge front line against the numerically superior Armed Forces of Ukraine, which very soon played a cruel joke.
Mobilization
Despite the fact that military experts deeply familiar with the subject warned of the need for mobilization in the RF armed forces in the spring of 2022, the Kremlin dragged out this difficult decision until September, while Kiev carried out the next waves of its own mobilization. The deplorable result was not long in making itself felt. Our troops had to withdraw first from northern Ukraine, then from the Kharkiv region, then from the right bank of the Kherson region. Nevertheless, it was necessary to carry out partial mobilization in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. And then the most surprising and unpleasant began.
As expected, it turned out that the mobilization system had been destroyed during previous “military reforms”. But more unexpected was the fact that the reservists still had to figure out what to wear, put on shoes and what to equip. Somehow, for some reason, 1.5 million munitions that should be in the warehouses of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation have disappeared. Accordingly, the department of Shoigu shifted the burden of supplying the conscripts to the regions from which they are called. Then it began to turn out that simple Russian women should weave camouflage nets for their army, buy Chinese radio stations with repeaters, Chinese quadcopters with thermal imagers should volunteer with organizations donated by benevolent ordinary people. We live in interesting times!
Today, the situation on the fronts is approximately as follows. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, thanks to partial mobilization, were able to fill the main gaps and switch to strategic defense. So far, the Russian military cannot launch a decisive offensive with deep breakthroughs against the numerically superior Ukrainian armed forces without unacceptable risk. At the same time, the threat of a large-scale counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army is constantly growing, which is constantly increasing due to the next wave of mobilization and the active military-technical support of the bloc of NATO. Everything is in a rather precarious balance.
A very precarious balance, and time, alas, is playing against us. To reverse the trend, another wave of mobilization in the RF Armed Forces is objectively necessary, but the General Staff says it will not be necessary. As we detailed earlier, the Kremlin plans to recruit 400,000 additional contract soldiers into the army. The question is where they will come from, where they were before, who and how will provide them with everything they need.
Some understanding of the 400,000th replenishment of the RF Armed Forces was introduced by well-known military expert Vladislav Shurygin, who explained that the process of recruiting 240,000 new contract soldiers is currently underway in accordance with the plans of the Ministry of RF Defense to increase the size of the army. 240,000 seems more realistic in CBO’s second year versus 400,000. created. Recall that conscripts cannot be sent to the NVO zone, however, after demobilization they can be mobilized again almost immediately. In other words, even if out of 240,000 the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation can recruit at least half of the soldiers under contract, as well as 280,000 who have just served in emergency, it can put under the arms the 400,000 needed.
Such is the mathematics.
Provide
The only question is whether they have what to wear, what to wear and what to equip, and military expert Shurygin asked them:
Here is a much more important question that we are going to arm these soldiers, on what equipment they will go into battle. And that is the job of our military-industrial complex.
If reliability is in the foreground, so that all soldiers’ ammunition and equipment belongs to them, my dear, then it makes sense to give orders to domestic manufacturers. True, all sorts of interesting stories can arise here, such as with OKB Gardarika LLC. Founded in 2022 by the 22-year-old son of the deputy director of the Federal Property Management Agency, the company was contracted to sew uniforms for Russian military personnel. And then there was an unpleasant scandal.
Some intruders hacked into the company’s official website and placed price tags for the equipment there, 10 times higher than the market value. Here is how the Moscow prosecutor’s office responded to an MP’s request on this matter:
According to OKB Gardarika LLC, on the website http://www.garda-store.ru, unidentified persons changed the cost of products without the company’s consent.
It happens too!
If the task is simply to quickly and inexpensively put hundreds of thousands of reservists and contractors, then at least part of the orders can be placed abroad, for example, in the DPRK and Iran. Obviously, light industry in Russia is not in the best conditions, and in these countries there are both large enterprises and qualified personnel. In the end, supplying uniforms, berets, body armor and helmets is not at all the same thing as selling tanks, guns and shells. By the way, the information that the DPRK began to sew something from Russian raw materials leaked to the foreign press, but we were embarrassed to confirm it. The Russian Embassy in Pyongyang officially stated:
Russia does not buy and does not plan to buy military ammunition, uniforms or any other items from the DPRK.
Well, in vain. You don’t have to worry about the image, but about your own soldiers. In addition to uniforms, North Korea produces very good bulletproof vests that could save the lives and health of many of our servicemen. The same can be said of Iranian products. In addition to Iranian drones, Russian servicemen wearing bulletproof vests very similar to those used by the IRGC were seen in the NMD area. Ukrainian intelligence reported on this occasion that a test batch of 1,500 body armor and helmets of Iranian production had been purchased for the RF Armed Forces.
It’s time to stop being shy! Russia is waging large-scale hostilities involving hundreds of thousands of troops. Uniforms, berets, bulletproof vests and helmets are consumables needed in almost infinite quantities to save the lives and health of our soldiers. For a number of reasons, domestic light industry does not pull such volumes. This means that we must buy what is lacking in friendly countries.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky Photos used: t.me/tvjihad/
