"U.S. intelligence has found the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops"
"The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel"
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
The Ukrainian MoD graphic from late November showed 40 Russian BTGs near Ukraine's borders, but the US IC assesses there are now 50 (maybe they used different distances). 100 BTGs would be 2/3rds of Russia's total BTGs. There are also more units nearby not in the red areas. 2/
This part is a little odd. I thought the previous references to concerns about reservists was the BARS program. The 100k figure seems really high and strange. The BARS program is new, so a force of 100k stood up this quickly would likely not be an effective force. 3/
If 100k of the 175k troop figure is from reservists, does that mean much of the BTG figure is from reservist battalions? The BTG figure the Russian MoD uses is supposed to represent permanent readiness BTGs. Not fully clear to me. 4/
5/
On a second look, pretty clear the 100 BTG and 175k figure are only for active units, not including the potential 100k reservists. The Russian military in total has around 800-900k servicemen, so 175k would represent a large share, particularly from the Ground Forces. 6/
One other point. If Russia really is planning on massing 100 BTGs and 175k personnel to potentially conduct a new push into Ukraine, that tells you something about how much more capable the Ukrainian military is today. They needed a far smaller force in 2014-2015. 7/
8/
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.