The Russian military leadership has no plans to draft more troops as career military service members can meet its present needs, including those who volunteered to fight against Ukraine, based on a testimony by a senior official on September 29.
Vladimir Tsimlyansky, the deputy chief of the mobilization directorate of the General Staff, reinforced Russia’s pledge to halt further troop mobilization, during a briefing regarding a scheduled conscription campaign that starts next week.
“The number of people wishing to enroll in Russian military service under a contract, as well as volunteers who have decided to take part in the special military operation, is sufficient for fulfilling our tasks,” Tsimlyansky said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of an additional 300,000 troops in September 2022, seven months after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, after Kyiv vowed to continue fighting against Russia with Western help and dismissed any notion of peace talks.
In late August, the Kyiv regime’s military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov alleged that Moscow was hoping to draft an additional 450,000 troops in the fall.
Moreover, Budanov tried to reassure Ukrainians, saying that they “should not be afraid of it too much” as Russia reportedly has been clandestinely recruiting tens of thousands each month and “nothing bad happened.”
Earlier this month, Putin claimed that around 300,000 people had enrolled in the Russian army this year alone, explaining why Moscow did not require foreign fighters, unlike the Kyiv regime. Putin made these statements to counter allegations that Moscow had requested aid from North Korea to replenish manpower, a prospect that he castigated as “total nonsense.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine has been embroiled in corruption scandals entailing conscription chiefs, prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky to declare in August that he was purging all regional draft heads in the country.
Besides, Kyiv has lowered eligibility standards for recruits, even deeming people with certain mental and physical disabilities as fit for duty. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has also demanded that female medics and pharmacists sign up for possible conscription, supposedly leading to a mass departure of women from these professions.
This recent amendment mandates that female medics and pharmacists register their personal data at the nearest draft office for potential enlistment.
“Owners of pharmacies are in a panic. People are resigning and moving to Europe before they could be stopped at the border,” Elena Prudnikova, the head of a Ukrainian pharmaceutical business association, disclosed to online news outlet Strana.ua.
“Who knows who would work, considering that the industry is already in a serious crisis,” Prudnikova continued.
This mandate materializes on October 1, with Kyiv stepping up its drive to replenish its military ranks by relaxing eligibility.
Potential draftees are forbidden from departing Ukraine without a special exemption. Local media reports indicate that implementing this rule for women may be challenging since Ukraine has not introduced an electronic database in which border-control officers can keep tabs on travelers. That being said, the Ukrainian Parliament is floating this bill for such a register.
“Many female medics are urgently preparing to leave for Europe,” Vasily Voskboynik, the head of a Ukrainian association of international staffing agencies, admitted.
“With their professions, they have good chances to find employment there,” he pointed out.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s first attempt to order mandatory registration gave rise to widespread public anger, prompting the authorities to postpone it.
Following its expensive and faltering counteroffensive against Russia, Kyiv is grappling with replenishing its forces, with some estimates putting Ukrainian losses at nearly 80,000 troops since the beginning of June.
On September 28, Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance divulged that the nation’s national debt levels had risen by another billion dollars and attained a historically unprecedented $133.93 billion, amounting to more than 84 percent of the country’s projected 2023 GDP.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov recently estimated that the country’s debt may hit $173 billion (107 percent of GDP) by the end of 2023, while the IMF predicts that such a figure will only be reached by 2025.
Consequently, the Zelensky regime has started exploring new methods to raise funds to mitigate next year’s forecast $40 billion deficit amid increases in defense expenditures, as well as money owed to Western funds including BlackRock and Fidelity are due.
Amid Kyiv’s mounting financial headaches, a number of U.S. officials have been becoming increasingly tired of continuing to back Kyiv, especially given Ukraine’s corruption history, with officials buying luxury cars and reports that U.S. aid has been channeled to purchases of private equity firms as well as Ukrainian designer knitwear firms. In contrast, ordinary Americans have had to tackle the pressures of inflation and soaring energy costs as the inept administration of Joe Biden continues to bankroll Zelensky’s ambitions.
In fact, the Biden administration has requested that Congress approve an additional $24 billion in assistance to Ukraine, including $13 billion in military aid.
“I don’t know who can keep track of these figures anymore,” Dr. Nicolai Petro, an international politics professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Sputnik News, regarding the disputes in Congress over more Ukraine aid.
“When I talk to my students about budgetary numbers, I always use the generic designation ‘gazillion’ because I simply no longer have a grasp of how much money this is and over what time it’s being sent,” Petro stated. “I’ve tried to keep track of the assistance being offered, which falls into different categories — humanitarian, financial, administrative and military to Ukraine, but it is an impossible task, because on the one hand there is what is designated, [but] on the other hand, we don’t know over what time period it is designated to be dispersed.”
“Situations change, objectives change and the money is simply reallocated. So we can only speak of what has been done in the past tense. This money, for example, has actually been allocated: All we can really say is it’s in the $100 billion or so [range]. And if one adds in the EU, I think it is somewhere at least twice [that] if not two-and-a-half times greater. What does this mean for Ukraine? It means, according to Neil Ferguson, I think writing in Bloomberg … [that]70 percent of Ukrainian government functions are paid for by the West. So what that means is, in effect, Ukraine is no longer a functioning state; it must be thought of, sadly, as a failed state. And one of the things that derives from that, as I believe Secretary of State Colin Powell once said, is ‘if we broke it, we bought it,’” Petro elaborated.
The scholar cautioned that the United States has only “skimmed the surface” on the final actual costs Washington will eventually incur in Ukraine.
“It’s going to get larger and larger as time goes on. Again, having paid this much for Ukraine, there’s no end in sight, and there’s no keen interest that I can discern on having negotiations that would bring about an end to the conflict. As a result, how are we dealing with this cost? Well, as Senator Schumer said, ‘we’re kicking the can down the road to November 17.’ [i.e. the next debt deadline] And then what? Then all over again? This is a totally dysfunctional system and way of running the government,” the academic posited.
Reeling from the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Kyiv’s shocking debt figures today have been the consequence of successive governments’ misguided borrowing policies, including cash loaned by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for economic reforms, as well as the NATO proxy conflict with Russia since February 2022. The regime’s debt skyrocketed by around $77 billion since the start of 2022 alone.
