Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien

A very quick thread on those talking about Russia settling in for a long war and mobilising it’s resources for an extended campaign. Could they do it: possibly, but it would be a very different war with major societal implications.

The Russian Army is actually not that large. It’s around 900,000, which sounds big (though for a country of Russia’s size it’s very thinly spread) but about a third is conscript and many of the ‘professionals’ are on 12 month contracts. csis.org/blogs/post-sov…

We have pretty good intelligence that the Russians have deployed 75% of their best fighting formations to Ukraine (these are the ones wasting away now). Maybe they send the other 25%, but even that won’t make much of a difference in the short term.

Basically, because of a shortage of trained, professional (motivated) personnel, if Russia is going to fight this long war some are mentioning, they are going to have to create almost an entire new army.

The report above, which was very positive about overall Russian military modernisation, did admit that the Russian military before Ukraine would struggle in a long war, and I doubt they were thinking about something as immediately damaging as Ukraine.

So you would need to staff a new army. With what? Forced conscripts or out of shape reservists? Not the easiest of sell if your media is telling the Russian people the war is a great success.

Then you need to train your new, mostly conscript military (can’t imagine many would volunteer). If you don’t want them all to be cannon fodder that’s not a fast task. Basic training plus advanced training. From this moment; would be almost a year til they were ready?

And of course you need to competently organise and equip this new army while under harsh sanctions. Could they do it. Again possibly. But would require mass commitment and willingness to sacrifice for Putin. We will have to see. Im skeptical

Btw, The 75% refers to the percent of overall Battlion Tactical Groups Russia has in Ukraine. These are the best trained offensive formations. You can’t just turn the rest of the Russian Army into BTGs overnight. Lots of training and reequipping needed. forbes.com/sites/davidham…