Russian Invasion of Ukraine

A senior Ukrainian military intelligence official said Russia had so far committed 38,000 men, including assault brigades redeployed from southern Ukraine, but the counter-attack was “still not large-scale”. It would need to send in more of its battle-hardened assault brigades to make more than “tactical” gains, the official added.

Zelenskyy has said that Russia will need about 100,000 troops to push his forces out.

Officials say mobilisation is on track, but that it would take another three months before the newly-trained troops could make an impact on the battlefield, the head of the defence committee of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Zavitnevych, told the FT.

The answer lies in Putin’s assumptions about the West. He was, it seems, taken aback by the West’s unity and willingness to assume costs in order to place sanctions on Russia and support Ukraine after the February 2022 invasion. However, there is a sense in Kremlin circles that western publics have also lost sight of the costs of this arm’s-length involvement in the war. As one Russian think tanker close to government circles put it to me, ‘you just write a cheque every month and let us and the Ukrainians do the suffering.’

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As a result, the chatter in Moscow is that the Kremlin is thinking that if European people can be made to feel that the war is directly affecting their lives for the worse, they will pressure their leaders to impose an ugly peace on Ukraine that will allow Putin to claim victory.

The exchange highlighted a thorny dilemma facing Putin. While he has resisted a troop mobilization that could come at a political cost, Western estimates suggest Russia is now losing more men on the battlefield than it can recruit to replace them.

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“Forces are currently not sufficient to achieve the original war aims, knock Ukraine out of the war, to undermine its military potential or protect border regions of the Russian territory,” said the person briefed on the exchange with Putin. “More and more people are saying mobilization is inevitable.”

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But Russia has gained ground in eastern Ukraine by throwing successive waves of soldiers at Ukrainian lines. That is leading to a high number of fatalities, with U.K. Defense Minister John Healey telling Parliament this month that the U.K. estimated Russia was losing 1,100 soldiers a day.

In July, Putin tried to boost troop numbers by doubling a one-time payment for new recruits to 400,000 rubles, or roughly $4,300, a huge sum in many parts of Russia. Some 8% of the Russian budget is now dedicated to paying for military personnel, Western officials say.

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Russian leaders also fear that a mobilization could upset a delicate balance that they have tried to strike in the public’s perception of the war. Russian media and state propaganda has sought to portray the war as a heroic but distant conflict. They want Russians to feel they can continue to enjoy a normal life, along with rising incomes and greater redistribution of wealth as a result of the war.

The Georgian Dream party has effectively threatened that if the opposition loses the upcoming election, it may lose legal means of fighting for power in the future. In other words, the authorities themselves are putting the opposition in a situation where street battles are the key to its survival.