Manpower plan of the Russian Armed Forces for 2023 implicit a sharp increase in their number. It was not covered by the first wave of mobilization. How reported Bloomberg in late March, the Ministry of Defense estimated that a large increase in the manpower needed to continue the war against Ukraine could be obtained by recruiting 400,000 “volunteers” for a contract.
The existence of such a plan is indirectly evidenced by orders for the employment of contract soldiers issued to regional and municipal military registration and enlistment offices. SO, plan recruitment, lowered to the military registration and enlistment office in the city of Nizhnekamsk, in proportion to the population of Russia, gives 650,000 contract soldiers throughout the country; A plan Kaluga region with the same recalculation – 400 thousand.
Some of the “volunteers” will obviously find themselves among the conscripts mobilized last fall and will be this spring. But even if the authorities force most conscripts to contract, that still won’t be enough to bring the troops to the numbers the authorities need (the entire conscription plan from April 1 to mid-July is 147,000) .
The practice of recruiting real volunteers for the war in Ukraine last year has shown that it is unrealistic to commit hundreds of thousands of people to war on their own. Thus, the number of the largest volunteer unit – the 3rd Army Corps, whose personnel throughout the country was collected by the governors of the regions, did not exceed 20 thousand people.
In other words, without mobilization, the authorities simply do not have enough people for the war.