Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Thursday to increase the size of Russia’s armed forces from 1.9 million to 2.04 million as the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month. .
Moscow has not reported casualties in the conflict since its early weeks, but Western officials and the Kiev government say they number in the thousands.
The military expansion includes an increase from 137,000 in the number of combatants to 1.15 million. The measure takes effect on January 1, according to the decree published on the government’s legislative portal.
The last time Putin fixed the size of the Russian army was in November 2017, when the number of combatants was set at 1.01 million out of a total strength of the Armed Forces, including non-combatants, of 1.9 million.
Russia does not say how many casualties it has suffered in Ukraine since the first weeks of the campaign, when it said 1,351 of its soldiers were killed.
According to Western estimates, the actual number could be at least 10 times higher, while Ukraine says it has killed or wounded at least 45,000 Russian soldiers since the conflict – which Moscow calls a special military operation – began on Feb.
Kiev has also been reluctant to publish information on how many of its soldiers have died in the war, but on Monday the head of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said nearly 9,000 soldiers had been killed.
Source: CNN Brasil
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