Thread by @JohnH105

Russia purports to have recruited nearly 400,000 troops this year, obviating the need for further forced mobilization. How realistic is this claim?

Data from Russia’s Vladimir Oblast provide a clue. 1/x

https://twitter.com/JohnH105/status/1717388323902095502

Located just east of Moscow, Vladimir Oblast is unusual in that its regional government and the government of its capital city, Vladimir, have religiously published videos/pictures each time a batch of recruits leaves for training.

2/x

In total, I’ve counted nearly 70 batches of recruits from April 14 to Nov 7, amounting to some 1,400 troops, give or take a few dozen.

The Google Sheet below contains a detailed breakdown along with sources.



3/xdocs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

Now, what can this tell us about Russia’s overall recruitment?

Per official Russian statistics, Vladimir Oblast had a population of 1,323,659 as of January 2022, while Russia as a whole had a population of 145,557,576.

4/x


33.rosstat.gov.ru/demograf#
rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediab…

If every Russian region recruited at the same rate as Vladimir Oblast, Russia would have recruited roughly 154,000 troops between mid-April and early November.

5/x

(Note that for practical purposes, I’m excluding the Russian-annexed parts of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts but including Crimea and Sevastopol, all of which remain Ukrainian territory under international law.)

6/x

Obviously, the question is whether Vladimir Oblast is a representative sample.

Myriad variables could skew recruitment in one direction or the other, e.g. income level and ethnic composition.

I’m no statistician, and I won’t attempt to control for them all.

7/x

I’ll only note that in 2021, Vladimir Oblast ranked 56th out of Russia’s 85 federal subjects in terms of average salary, per Rosstat. Ethnic Russians comprise an overwhelming majority of the region’s residents.




8/xgogov.ru/articles/avera…
33.rosstat.gov.ru/VPN2020#

Also, Vladimir Oblast accounts for a roughly proportionate number of documented RU casualties in Ukraine. The region comprises ~0.91% of Russia’s population and ~0.81 percent of the total Russian KIAs documented by Mediazona and BBC.

9/x

en.zona.media/article/2022/0…