As of: January 30, 2024, 9:58 a.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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Members of the Kremlin Regiment on January 25, 2024 in Moscow.
© Sergei Bobylev/imago/Symbolbild
The war in Ukraine has now lasted over 700 days.
Russia is struggling with a shortage of personnel – in war as well as in the economy.
Is Putin running out of staff?
Moscow - Imagine it's war and no one is going there: it's apparently becoming increasingly difficult for Moscow to provide personnel supplies.
British intelligence recently noted an increasing number of arson attacks against recruiting offices in Russia.
Intelligence officials attribute this to growing dissatisfaction in society with the war in Ukraine and a lack of trust in President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin's domestic and foreign policy interests are increasingly contradicting each other.
Attacks on recruiting offices in Russia: “Lack of trust” in Putin’s promises
Russia has lost at least 120,000 soldiers since its invasion of Ukraine began, the
New York Times
reported last summer, citing US government sources.
In addition, between 170,000 and 180,000 are said to have been injured.
These numbers are now likely to be significantly higher.
Putin's troops need personnel, but an expansion of combat power should be achieved without general mobilization - for now.
After the presidential election in March, the Kremlin leader may change his domestic strategy.
“Further mobilization would be a contradiction to Putin's promise at his annual press conference on December 14, 2023 that there will be no further mobilization,” said the analysis in the Defense Ministry's daily intelligence report in London on Sunday (January 28).
The increasing attacks on recruitment offices in Russia would most likely suggest a lack of trust in this promise, London said.
There has also recently been isolated resistance to the war on Russian streets; the Kremlin responded with a new law on the expropriation of war opponents.
Because of the war in Ukraine: Russia's economy is suffering from a labor shortage
Russia now spends 40 percent of its gross domestic product on the war in Ukraine.
The US think tank
Institute for the Study of War
reported this on Saturday with reference to
Telegraph
.
In addition to quality control, the Russian defense industry is also struggling with a labor shortage, according to the ISW experts.
However, a lack of workers is not just a problem for the defense industry.
“There are practically no hands left to work with,” Putin’s central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina recently said about the Russian economy.
It is estimated that more than a million people are missing from the labor market due to the war in Ukraine.
Some because they were drafted for military service.
Others because they fled abroad after the partial mobilization in Russia became known.
In addition, many are drawn to well-paid jobs in the defense industry or to positions in state-owned companies, which offer less money but protection against recruitment.
The soldier's salary becomes less attractive in comparison.
Dying in Putin's war is no longer worth it.
By 2030, there will be a shortage of up to four million people in the Russian labor market
According to Ukrainian information, Russia was still able to recruit 385,000 new soldiers last year.
There are also repeated ISW reports about the continued deployment of private Russian mercenary troops to Ukraine.
According to unconfirmed information from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, there are 25 million reservists in Russia.
At the beginning of last year, the aim was to expand the army from 1.15 million to 1.5 million soldiers by 2026.
“It is unclear whether the Russian military will be able to grow within three years as Shoigu described,” the ISW war experts said at the time.
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A banner reading "We remember your bravery, Russian soldiers!" in St. Petersburg as part of an interactive project designed to recreate the city's battlefields during World War II.
© Alexander Demianchuk/imago
Putin could soon reach the limits of the domestic labor market.
Moscow-based management consultancy Yakov and Partners estimates that the workforce deficit will be between two and four million people by 2030.
Yakov's experts continued that wages have doubled in the past five years.
At the same time, the number of job vacancies increased by 80 percent during this period.
There is also a shortage of personnel in the Ukrainian army: military leaders are calling for “up to 500,000 forces” to be mobilized
Ukraine probably also has a personnel problem.
Last summer, the
New York Times
put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed at 70,000.
In addition, 100,000 to 120,000 were injured, it was said.
At the end of last year, the military leadership in Kiev proposed mobilizing “450,000 to 500,000” forces, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced at his year-end press conference at the end of December.
The president himself was initially not convinced.
Zelensky said at the time that he needed “more arguments to support this idea.”
The recruitment of new staff has recently stalled due to structural problems.
An audit of the military offices in Ukraine last year also revealed enormous corruption.
Zelensky then demonstratively had the heads of all 24 offices fired.
“You can also say that the mobilization has collapsed,” officer Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, told
NV
about the aftermath.
A little later, the commander in chief of the armed forces, General Valeriy Zalushnyj, also admitted that there had been a slowdown in call-ups.