It’s not at all clear that Russia can conscript, equip, arm, and deploy an effective mass army late this fall or winter.
The news that the Kremlin is moving to hold sham referenda in the occupied regions of Ukraine on joining the Russian Federation — beginning as soon as this Friday! — as well as the rumblings that Russia may be inching towards a declaration of war and a partial or full mobilization, has been met with understandable alarm.
According to the New York Times, legislation is set to pass through the Duma — the Russian parliament — and reach President Putin’s desk for his signature within days:
It would introduce tougher prison terms for desertion, evading service by “simulating illness,” and insubordination. It also made voluntary surrender a criminal offense punishable with up to 10 years behind bars. Looting would be punishable with a prison term of up to six years, according to the State Duma’s statement.
The bill also introduced prison terms for failure to supply weapons to the army as prescribed by state contracts.
These might seem like limited measures, but the bill is widely seen as the precursor to at least a partial mobilization. According to the Times,
Igor Strelkov, a Russian former intelligence officer, who has been arguing that Russia cannot win the war without mobilizing, wrote on Telegram that the legislation and the announcements of referendums show that “there is no doubt — very hastily laid legal foundations are being made for a partial mobilization.”
It’s worth asking, however, what a Russian declaration of war or a mobilization, partial or otherwise, would mean on the battlefield.
For several reasons, it’s not at all clear that Russia can conscript, equip, arm, and deploy an effective mass army late this fall or winter.
Simply conscripting fighting men won’t be an entirely easy task. For years, service in the army has been seen by the average Russian as a brutal, demeaning experience and one to be avoided if at all possible. Those with money and friends in high places have eschewed service altogether, and many without either have found that they can simply ignore the annual conscription notice and count on bureaucratic incompetence, delay, and laziness for protection.
Once the men are in uniform, turning undisciplined civilians into useful soldiers will pose another challenge. Useful soldiers are those who can both follow orders and think for themselves when necessary in order to accomplish the assigned task. In the best of times, conscript-heavy armies are known for the former quality, especially when the conscripts hail from countries with strong social bonds and a belief in their nation’s cause. Conscript armies are decidedly not known for the latter quality. It’s likely that hastily assembled Russian reinforcements will demonstrate little of either.
As for equipment, severe battlefield attrition, as well as years of industrial inefficiency and bureaucratic corruption, have left the Russians scrambling for modern kit — and that was before Western sanctions imperiled the Russian state’s finances and deprived Russian industry of key components for weapons manufacture that had been previously imported from the West. It’s very likely that new Russian units deployed to the front, or individual Russian soldiers sent to augment depleted formations, will be sent into battle with Soviet-era equipment — most of which has been left to rot in warehouses or open-air marshaling yards for nearly three decades. Much of this neglected equipment is useless, and that may be putting it generously.
But supposing the Russians can do all this — conscript, train, arm, and deploy thousands of new soldiers while withstanding the further damage that a mobilization will inflict on the Russian economy — the Ukrainian high command should be licking its chops. An infusion of troops will force Russian commanders — egged on by an impatient Kremlin — to try to regain the offensive and the operational initiative in pursuit of decisive victory. But this won’t be the increasingly mobile and confident Red Army of 1943 and 1944, supported by hordes of U.S.-supplied Ford trucks transporting mountains of ammunition and Spam. This will be an under-equipped, unmotivated Russian army operating on foreign soil against dogged resistance, supported by inefficient Russian logistics that are already struggling to get the needed ammunition, food, and supplies from the factories and storehouses to the railheads, let alone to the front.
Earlier today, Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote that the Russian government is set to announce the full annexation of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces “before mobilizing the Russian economy and society to achieve that end.” “Nothing is guaranteed in war,” he writes. “But a mobilization of Russian society will take months to complete, suggesting that Putin is hunkering down for a longer war, with all the dangers, death, and destabilization that implies.”
This is dangerous indeed. A disciplined and increasingly well-equipped Ukrainian army should be able to inflict grievous casualties on green Russian troops, especially if the Russians choose to throw their men into offensive operations for which they will be unprepared.
Those casualties, combined with grinding inflation and destitution on the home front, could motivate Vladimir Putin to play his most dangerous card of all: nuclear brinksmanship and escalation.