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ISW Analysts Explain Why Mobilisation Won't Save Putin

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ISW Analysts Explain Why Mobilisation Won't Save Putin

The Kremlin head has not even made an effort to prepare Russians for war.

Putin is unlikely to overcome fundamental structural problems by mobilising large numbers of Russians for war in Ukraine. The partial mobilisation he announced on September 21 will provide additional forces, but they will not be effective and in return will cause great internal and social losses.

According to experts at the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in their September 25 report, Putin has made no effort to prepare the Russian population for war and for mobilisation.

"Putin will have to address major shortcomings of Russia's military personnel and equipment system. His actions so far indicate that he is far more concerned about getting the mobilised to the battlefield than fixing these major shortcomings," the ISW report said.

Since 2008, the Russian Armed Forces have not created the conditions for effective mobilisation of reservists that would allow a lot of people to be mobilised quickly, experts say. When most countries reformed their armed forces and switched to contract service, Putin did the same, but at the same time, he left conscription in place, reducing the period of service to one year.

Therefore, because of this, the Russian army has adopted a kind of hybrid model, which combines conscripts and professional soldiers. And the Russian military has become a mix of professional volunteer contract servicemen and one-year conscripts.

"Prioritising professional forces and deprioritising conscription has probably led to the breakdown of the bureaucratic structures required for mobilisation. Mobilisation is always bureaucratically complicated. It requires from local officials across the country to perform well the task, which they probably never perform and rarely, if ever, rehearse. Maintaining the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to conduct a large-scale call-up requires considerable attention from the top - attention that has probably not been given in Russia for the past 15 years," the US analysts emphasise.

At the same time, Putin's informational blunders regarding "special military operation" rather than war have not created an informational environment in Russia to prepare the population for mobilisation. This is especially important as there are no Ukrainian or NATO troops on Russian soil and no threat of invasion in the Russian backcountry. This is not 1812, 1914 or 1941 and the factors which contributed to the mobilisation of the population in previous Russian wars are simply not present in this war of aggression, no matter how Putin presents it to his people.

The mobilisation process in Russia will therefore be ugly, the quality of the reservists low, and their motivation to fight probably even worse, analysts say.

"The problems undermining Putin's efforts to mobilise Russians to fight are, after all, so deep and fundamental that he will not be able to solve them in the coming months or perhaps years. This mobilisation will have no impact on the course of the war in 2022 and will probably have no impact on Russia's ability to maintain its current level of effort in 2023," the ISW noted.

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