That a military would make the number of troops under their command bigger isn’t new, with the most recent example being when the military made the number of troops in Afghanistan bigger.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate (GUR) said that Russian military officers are “inflating” how many troops they have in Ukraine, which is why so many people are afraid.
The claim specifically mentioned three motorised infantry brigades that were short on supplies.
Commanders told the GUR that the units were fully staffed even before the invasion began. But when the invasion started, it quickly became clear that the units were only about 55% staffed.
Two battalion commanders were arrested soon after this inconsistency was found. The GUR thinks that the people who arrested them were FSB operatives.
The idea that officers would make the number of troops under their command bigger isn’t new.
A good example of this is what happened in Afghanistan. At one point, after nearly two decades of US military presence in Afghanistan, the Afghan army was thought to have grown a lot and become an effective military force. At the very least, it was thought that it would be able to stop a Taliban takeover after the US left.
In fact, not only did the Taliban take over Afghanistan when the US left but they also took care of it very quickly. taking the country in a few days.
Corruption, for example, was thought to be a big factor in why this happened. The real world was a whole lot different from what was written down on paper.
As soon as the Taliban took over, Graham Platner, who had been a US soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Jerusalem Post that the Afghan army was not real. “None of it has ever been there.”
But the Russian army is a lot bigger than what the Afghans were said to have on paper. It has long been thought to be one of the best in the world.
As of 2021, Global Firepower said they were the second most powerful military force in the world, right behind the United States and ahead of China.
Moscow has spent the fourth-largest amount of money on its army, and it has the second-largest navy and air force in the world. It also has the most tanks, which is a lot more than the US has.
Russia’s army is thought to be the fifth-largest in the world. It has a million active-duty soldiers and two million in reserve.
But if the number of troops is exaggerated, it’s not clear how many are available to them.
This is even more true because there are more and more stories about soldiers who don’t want to fight in Ukraine.
It might not just be their soldiers who aren’t the same number on the ground as they are on paper.
Russian soldiers are trying to hide how many soldiers were killed in Ukraine on Monday, according to a GUR report. These bodies are said to have been kept in morgues in the Rostov Oblast for more than a month.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, on the other hand, gives daily updates on the number of Russian casualties since the war started. More conservative Western intelligence sources, on the other hand, put the number of Russian KIA at about half of what the Ukraine says.
These losses were totaled on Monday. There were 20,600 soldiers and 7,901 tanks. There were also 2,041 armoured vehicles and 381 artillery units. There were also 130 missile launchers and air defence systems. There were also 1,487 other vehicles that were lost in the fight.