Ukraine can face a bigger Russian army

Hello all.

I have released this new video where I discuss what the Russian reaction will be to Ukraine's incursion into Kursk. Putin faces a big dilemma, and he desperately needs more soldiers to deal with a much longer frontline. The most likely scenario is that he will use the conscripts. It is politically dangerous, but it's hard to see how they can significantly increase the size of their fighting force without taking this step.

This also explains why the Russians have been so slow to put up a decent response to Ukraine's offensive. They need to prepare the population before taking a drastic new step.

As always, you can watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Ukraine's incursion into Kursk has been more successful than I think most people had anticipated. They have taken a fairly large chunk of territory, and at this point they're still expanding the area that they control. In this video I want to discuss the dilemma that this creates for Putin and what possible courses of actions the Russians have, and then, judging by what we've seen so far, I'm going to give my assessment of how I think we should understand the Russian response and what this is about what to expect from the war in the coming time. So, let's talk about it.

Since Ukraine launched their incursion into Kursk, there's been a lot of speculation about what exactly is it that they're trying to achieve. So, it's discussions about exactly what territory they're going for, is the goal to take this railroad, is the nuclear power plant, is it to take a lot of prisoners of war. And while all these discussions are interesting, and I think the Ukrainians are definitely happy to achieve some of these things, then in the big perspective, I think we should see all these things as secondary objectives. So, it's good for Ukraine that they have cut an important railroad that Russia was using for logistics, and they're happy that they're taking Russian prisoners of war that they can then exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war. But this is not why they launched the invasion of Russia.

The primary reason why Ukraine did this is that they have a general objective of bringing the war into Russia. They want to create a domestic pressure on Putin, and in a more primitive sense, they would like the Russian army to destroy Russian cities instead of Ukrainian cities when they are doing the fighting. And then they chose this exact location to do it because there were some secondary objectives in this area that are attractive. So, that's for example the railroad, or they did it here because they identified that the terrain was suitable here, or that the Russians were particularly weak in this area. But the primary objective is this thing about bringing the war home to the Russians.

And the incursion into Kursk has created a huge dilemma for Putin, and this dilemma has a military dimension and it has a political one. So, if we start with the military dimension to Putin's dilemma, then the root cause of this actually goes back to May when Russia launched their offensive into the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. That move, when Russia did that, led to the American change in politics where Joe Biden for the first time allowed Ukraine, but now they can use American weapons, to hit things on Russian territory.

Originally the Ukrainians were only allowed to use these weapons in connection with the defense of the Kharkiv region, so it was very limited what they could do with the American weapons, and there was quite a lot of criticism of Joe Biden about that at the time. But the important thing was that the taboo was broken. So, we went from a situation where it was very easy to understand what the rules were. There was a red line. Ukraine could hit everything here, they could hit nothing there. And then we got into a situation where it was basically negotiable between the Ukrainians and the Americans on a case-to-case basis what they could do.
That completely changed the threat level against the Russian border, and I made a video about the consequences of this American policy change, and in that video I said some things that I think can explain the military dilemma that Putin is facing now. So, here's what I said:

"The second problem that this American decision will give to the Russians is that it makes the front line longer. Russia has so far had an asymmetric advantage in the sense that they have been able to concentrate their forces along the part of the front line that goes through Ukrainian territory. So, the Ukrainians have had to allocate troops to the entire front line, including the international border between the countries, but the Russians have been able to have a very light footprint in the north, and they have had the opportunity to take some of their more valuable systems and then just concentrate them, only use them in Ukraine, because that's where it was most important. So, that's things like air defense systems, electronic warfare equipment, those kinds of things.
But now suddenly they have to also use those along the border in the Belgorod, the Kursk, the Bryansk Oblasts. So, this can create holes in other areas where suddenly the Ukrainians will experience that they have some opportunities that they didn't have before."

Okay, apparently the Russian general staff did not watch my video because then they would have known that they needed to reinforce the border, but now after Ukraine's incursion into Kursk, then it's very obvious that this is something they will have to do. So, going forward, the Russians will have to make sure that the red line on the picture is as long as the blue one. So, the Russian army essentially has two tasks right now that will demand a lot of manpower.

First, they will have to put together a force that can throw the Ukrainians out again of the Kursk region, and then second, they will have to permanently reinforce the border so that the Ukrainians can't do it again. And the big question is then, where are all these soldiers going to come from? And here, the Russians essentially have two choices. Either they can take the soldiers that are currently engaged along the front line inside of Ukraine and they can move some of them back into Russia, or else they will have to take some new soldiers that are not currently engaged in the war, and then they can use them for this new task.

And this is where the military dilemma crosses into also becoming a political dilemma, because the way the Russians have been manning their force during the war so far is that essentially they've split the military into, on the one hand, there is a fighting force that consists of volunteers and people that have been mobilized specifically for this special military operation, and then on the other hand, there is a conscription army where young Russians can go through mandatory military service and they're not a part of the war in Ukraine. And the reason they've done this is that it would be very unpopular if they sent the conscripts into battle, and Putin is afraid of the political backlash because it's something that could potentially undermine the support for the war and for his government.

So we can say that there are these three groups of soldiers. There are volunteers, there are mobilized soldiers, and there are conscripts. And it's not likely that Russia can significantly increase the number of volunteers. They are already recruiting everyone they can find, and at the same time there are some signs that it's getting harder and harder for them to find new volunteers. So while they do still find new volunteers and they can find some people that are willing to sign a contract in exchange for a very good bonus, then it's not likely that they can significantly expand the force in that way.

And then there is of course the possibility that they can have another round of mobilization and they can find soldiers that way. That's definitely possible, but there will be obstacles here as well. The first one is that it would be unpopular. There was a big wave of mobilization in 2022 and it later turned out that Russia didn't actually intend on rotating those soldiers. So if you were one of the unlucky ones, you were mobilized, then you would have to stay on the front line until you're either dead or wounded. And this is something that, I mean, it's likely that people will be even more keen on avoiding being mobilized if there is a new wave of mobilization. And the second reason why mobilization is perhaps not their first choice is that it will be difficult for them to find the equipment for all these new soldiers. Russia is already struggling to provide equipment to the front line in Ukraine and it will be hard for them to expand the force just equipment-wise.

And that leads to the question of conscripts because here is a force that already exists. It already has basic training and it has some equipment and it is basically going around, they're doing military stuff, it's just not a part of the war. And Russia has about 200,000 to 250,000 conscript soldiers and they can basically use them tomorrow if Putin makes that decision. And they actually have a pretty easy way of doubling that number if they want to because right now there is in Russia a debate about whether they should go back to a conscription time of 24 months, which was as it was in the Soviet Union instead of the 12 months that it is today.

So what is Putin going to do? Is he going to move some of the existing soldiers from the front line in Ukraine so that they can throw the Ukrainians out of the Kursk region and reinforce the border? Or is he going to try to increase the size of the fighting force so that they can do both?

I think it's often helpful to look at the big trends and see what is the general direction of things. And in my last video I said that one of the current trends in the war is that it's going to move more and more into Russian territory. But another trend that is also very important is to ward more escalation. So both sides are still escalating. Ukraine escalated when they started the offensive into Kursk and already before that we were seeing record numbers of casualties this summer. In the West there have been some people that were thinking that this war is turning into a kind of frozen conflict, but actually more people are dying in 2024 than in 2023 because Russia has escalated the intensity of their attacks basically across the entire front line compared to last year.

So if we judge by the place where we are in the war and the trends that are influencing the decisions that are being made, then I think the most likely thing is that Putin will try to escalate his way out of this problem that he has now. And that means finding more soldiers either through mobilization or through the use of conscripts. And as I said before, using the conscripts is probably the more attractive choice of those two because it's easier, but also because it's cheaper because then you won't have this whole conscript army going around that is essentially redundant.

And if we look at what the Russians have actually been doing since Ukraine's incursion into Kursk, then I think it fits this picture. Like we've seen some announcement that some conscript units from around Russia are being sent toward the Ukrainian border, but they're taking it slowly because they want to be careful. So it's just a relatively small number of units so far, and they're watching to see the reaction from the Russian people. And if it looks like they're going to get away with it and it doesn't create a lot of trouble, then they will take that as a sign that they can go ahead and they can use conscripts on a bigger scale.

So if we look at the Russian response to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk and we can see that it's been kind of slow, they haven't really managed to find a way to stop the Ukrainians yet, then I think we need to be careful not to interpret that as a sign that they're lost or that they don't know what to do. I think we can just as well see that as a sign that Putin has decided to go for escalation, that he wants the big package. He wants to expand the fighting force to include the conscripts. And then they know that in order to succeed with that, it's important that they don't move too quickly because that could destabilize the situation in Russia. So they need to sort of move ahead carefully and they need to normalize the idea that conscripts are a part of the war.

And if that means that it will take some weeks or maybe even months before they can put up a sort of adequate response to the Ukrainian offensive, so be it. That is something they're willing to accept if it means that, let's say by the end of the year, they will have a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand new soldiers in the fighting force.

So for sure, there is also a lot of chaos and confusion and frustration in the top of the Russian system right now. But I think it's important that we don't exaggerate that effect or assume that everything is so chaotic that they don't have a plan. And then the big question is then, of course, that what are all these conscript soldiers going to be able to do? They have some equipment, they have some training, but it won't be on the same level as those units that are fighting in Ukraine and have a lot of experience.

So I don't think they can avoid entirely moving resources from the front line in Ukraine to also cover this new front line in Russia. They will have to take some resources, both in terms of manpower, but definitely also in terms of vehicles and ammunition, those sorts of things. But I think it's going to be less than many people in Ukraine are probably hoping. And I think they're going to try to spare the most important parts of the front line, which is the one in Donetsk.

The sad conclusion is that it's likely that as a result of this Ukrainian attack into the Kursk region, then we're going to see an escalation of the war where Ukraine will be facing a bigger Russian army. So in round numbers, it will be the existing army that is attacking Ukraine plus the Russian conscript army. So on the one hand, this will mean that Russia will have more soldiers, but on the other hand, it will also mean that Russia will be more vulnerable. It will give some challenges for Ukraine because they have to face more Russian soldiers, but it will also give opportunities because they can target those Russian conscripts and they can hit the Russian society where it hurts the most.

And while this sounds very pessimistic, I actually think that it's what Ukraine was expecting would come of this. They know that if they push Russia really hard and Putin is under enough pressure, then sooner or later he was going to take this step. And I guess from a Ukrainian point of view, then sooner is better than later, because if they want to put Putin under so much pressure that he will be willing to end the war, then it's going to take a lot more than just humiliating him or stealing a bit of land in Kursk. They need to generate a lot more opposition across Russia and getting the conscripts into the war is probably a necessary step.

So I think we will see Ukraine doing what they can to maximize the casualties among the Russian conscripts. It's not pleasant to think about, especially given that right now there is a lot of optimism about the things that Ukraine is doing. But I think we are unfortunately at a point where the war is going to get worse before it can get better.

Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like and also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon, then you will get notifications when I upload new videos. And if you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.