The Russian Federation (RF) is running short on troops willing to fight in Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to seek recruit in prisons and hire mercenaries, two Ukrainian military security analysts said, in comments made public on Monday, March 28.
Myhailo Makaruk, a speaker for the volunteer-run military information group InformNapalm, during an interview on 24TV said the RF is attempting to organize new units to replace formations gutted in the past month of fighting, but Moscow more and more is unable to field new units of fully-trained soldiers motivated to fight.
InformNapalm researchers have identified a training camp in Russia’s Kursk region as the main center where Moscow is gathering both newly-formed units and regular army forces from elsewhere in the country, Makaruk said.
After a month of bloody war, according to news reports and statements by dozens of RF POWs, the RF has stripped other regions of Russia almost bare of regular army troops. Among RF combat formations encountered by UAF units have been Kremlin troops drawn from the politically sensitive Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Chinese border regions, from the high Arctic and even Marine brigades from the Far East and Lapland.
Military-security analyst Mykola Sungrovsky, speaking at the same television news marathon, said that the RF still is able to feed new troops into battle. He estimated the number of more or less trained RF soldiers as yet uncommitted and reasonably deployable to Ukraine at five battalion tactical groups: roughly 5,000 to 7,000 men, at best.
According to Sungrovsky, these soldiers, drawn from garrisons, and city and staff duty, could be formed into viable combat units but, already, the RF is facing difficulty finding the tanks, artillery, and infantry fighting vehicles needed to replace its losses in Ukraine, never mind armed new formations.
RF attempts to bring back on line older military equipment held in storage have failed, he said, catastrophically. He repeated a frequently-reported news item about an RF colonel in charge of a tank storage facility who, when told to bring the tanks on line, found only one in ten in working condition, and seven so pirated for parts, that they were total losses.
Sungovsky said he could not confirm the anecdote, but, Ukrainian army intelligence is confident that whatever new major equipment the RF fields in Ukraine in future, will be inferior to RF equipment already on the line, and possibly obsolete. Given personnel shortages, he said, the RF already is offering amnesty to prison inmates willing to volunteer to fight in Ukraine.
Luhansk regional defense commander Serhiy Haidai in comments in the same TV marathon said Kyiv is aware of continuing RF efforts to recruit mercenaries to beef up its forces in Ukraine, particularly among the Belarusian military and in the Middle East. He said Ukrainian intelligence believes “trainloads” of “volunteer fighters” from either Dagestan or Chechnya are currently en route the RF-controlled city Debaltsevo, for training.
Haidai said the level of military training of this Caucasus-drawn contingent was likely low, and suggested that they would experience serious casualties if pitted against the UAF, which has fought successfully for more than a month and have demonstrated particularly skill in defensive tactics.
