October 12, 2024: Russia is desperate to obtain more soldiers for its war in Ukraine. So far over half a million Russians have been killed or wounded in Ukraine. The Russian army looked to the navy as a source of additional soldiers. Ukrainian naval drones sank or damaged most of the ships in the Black Sea fleet and forced the remaining ships to take refuge in remote Black Sea ports. The crews of these blockaded warships had little to do and Russian admirals were unwilling to send their ships out to be sunk by the Ukrainian naval and aerial drones. Before the war the Russian navy has 140,000 personnel, which included 12,000 naval infantry. By 2023 most of the naval infantry had already been sent to Ukraine. More recently most of the crew on the only Russian aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov, were sent to Ukraine. Since the Kuznetsov was undergoing a never-ending series of repairs, 1,500 sailors from the ship were available for service in Ukraine. New Russia sailors receive some training with infantry weapons. As a result, using these sailors as infantry in Ukraine makes sense. Unless you happen to be one of those sailors.

The unexpectedly high casualties Russian troops suffered in Ukraine has made it difficult for Russia to obtain replacements. Technically, Russia is not at war, so it cannot mobilize large portions of Russian military age men to defend Russia. Invading Ukraine and failing to win eventually caused most military age Russian men to refuse requests that they join the army for the emergency, as the government calls it, in Ukraine. The Russian military had to be creative and they were, but there were still not enough new troops.

The Russian military has, since World War II, had a difficult time getting Russians to join the military. Until Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the Russian army did not need a lot of soldiers. Nearly three years of fighting Ukraine resulted in heavy losses the Russian military was not able to replace.

Another problem is the failed efforts to reform the Russian army. These reform efforts began in the 1990s when new troops were told that the Ukrainian troops were no match for Russian soldiers. Russians also found it hard to believe that the Ukrainians, who were part of the Soviet Union until 1991, had managed in less than a decade after Russia’s first invasion in 2014 to implement many fundamental reforms. Some of these reforms were far more ambitious than any Russia ever attempted. After a few months of fighting in Ukraine it was painfully obvious that Russian troops were no match for their Ukrainian adversaries. Before that, Russians believed that their dismal reform efforts had magically worked as nearly half their combat units assembled on the Ukrainian border.

Reports from the Russian capital, which Ukrainian military leaders believed, indicated the decision had been made to invade despite obvious defects in the training, morale and equipment of Russian units. The reality of the differences between Russian and Ukrainian forces was soon made clear as the advance was stopped short of its goals and suffered heavy casualties in the process. Copies of the attack plan, which were only distributed to a few senior commanders leading the attack, showed that the Russians believed they could quickly reach and take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and replace the government with a pro-Russian one and declare the war over. At that point the rest of Ukraine was supposed to surrender and get used to being Russian once more. This didn’t happen and the Russian military was not expecting their forces to suffer such heavy casualties. Russian generals also didn’t expect Ukrainian forces to invade part of Russia in August 2024. That bold move revealed how heavy the Russian losses in Ukraine actually were. It took Russia weeks to gather any troops to oppose the Ukrainian invasion and two months later, the Ukrainian troops are still inside Russia.