Putin struggles to fill military ranks as conscripts mobilized

Putin does not have enough soldiers to fill the gap in the defense of the Kursk region. According to experts, nearly two weeks after the invasion by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, there are still fewer Russian soldiers in the area than Ukrainian soldiers. Therefore, conscripts from other regions of Russia have started to be gathered for its defense. "People are horrified," says a representative of the "Go by the Forest" project.

"Go by the Forest" is a Russian opposition project that emerged after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It helps Russians avoid forced conscription into the army and being sent to the front. Following Ukraine's attack on the Kursk region, thousands of conscripts have contacted volunteers, warning that they are at risk of being sent to the Kursk region.

"People are horrified. We are overwhelmed with requests and can barely keep up," said Ivan Chuvilayev, spokesperson for the project, in an interview with the "Financial Times." According to him, conscripts who have begun to be sent to the Kursk region from other areas and their families have started to seek help en masse.

It started in some regions, but now it is clear that conscripts are being mobilised from all over Russia, adds Chuvilayev.

According to the spokesperson, there have been requests for conscripts from at least 10 units, "so it’s fair to say around 1,000 people have been moved [to Kursk]." About 250 conscripts have certainly been transferred from the unit in the Leningrad region in Russia.

"People are horrified" he added.

Initially, the border zone was to be guarded by FSB border guards, the Chechen Akhmat battalion, and military units stationed there. According to Dara Massicot, a specialist in Russian armed forces and a senior fellow at Carnegie Berlin Center for the Study of Russia and Eurasia, Russian command has transferred additional forces from military districts in Leningrad and Moscow, "some of them are conscripts."

No one guarding the border was prepared for the invasion of Ukrainian troops—to such an extent that even some bloggers (sympathetic to the Kremlin) accused the Chechens of "striking a deal" with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

According to them, Akhmat deliberately allowed the Ukrainians to cross the border.

Meanwhile, a few days after the operation began, the project published a video showing dozens of prisoners of war, including Akhmat fighters. The commentary noted that the Chechens were caught deep in the rear and did not even try to resist as well as hiding behind conscripts on the tenth line of defense near Kursk.

Numerous times, this version of events has been confirmed by conscripts who were captured at the border by Ukrainians.

"Plugging the gap in Kursk clearly isn’t easy for Russia," says Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian army and the military-industrial complex and a visiting senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. "By the second half of 2023, they were already reassigning personnel from other branches of the military [to Ukraine]. They were sending people from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, and so on," adds Luzin.

The defense failure in the Kursk region only reinforces this trend. Due to personnel shortages in the ground forces, the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Kursk is now reflected in the temporary motorized rifle regiment of the Aerospace Forces, specially gathered from all over Russia—including from the nuclear strike warning station and the heavy bomber regiment, the "Important Stories" project reported, citing a person familiar with the situation in the Aerospace Forces units.

It turns out that the conscript soldiers, of whom there are currently about 300,000, according to Luzin, are really the only significant forces that can be sent to the Kursk region. Putin repeatedly assured that conscripts would not take part in the "special military operation." By law, only those who have served for four months and undergone special training can be sent to combat zones.

"Conscripts are being forced to sign contracts, and their documents are being falsified to make it appear as though they have been serving for a long time," says Chuvilayev.