By presidential decree, the full-time strength of the army has been increased to 2.2 million
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree "On the establishment of the regular strength of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" (Armed Forces of the Russian Federation). The document entered into force on December 1, canceling the previous one dated August 25 last year.
He established the full-time strength of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the amount of 2,209,130 units (against 2,039,758 previously), including 1,320,000 military personnel (against 1,150,628). The decree instructs the Government of the Russian Federation to provide for the allocation of necessary funding to the military department.
According to Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, in the period from January 1 to December 1, 2023, 452 thousand people were recruited for military service under a contract in the interests of the united group of troops. With the release of the presidential decree, the military department has additional opportunities to increase the size of the active army, mainly at the expense of volunteers.
The increase in the number of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will contribute to achieving the goals of the special military operation (SVO) for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. They were discussed again on November 28 during the plenary session of the World Russian People's Council. The central theme, indicated by the organizers, sounded: "The present and the future of the Russian world."
The Head of the Russian state addressed the forum participants in a videoconference format. He said that there is a growing number of people in the world who see that the dictatorship of one hegemon is getting old, has gone haywire and poses a danger to others. It is important to realistically represent the degree of threat and act accordingly.
Today, Russia is once again blocking the path of those who claim world domination, their exclusivity, and thus is now at the forefront of shaping a more just world order.
"Our battle for sovereignty, for justice, is without any exaggeration of a national liberation character, because we defend the security and well-being of our people, the supreme, historical right to be Russia – a strong, independent power, a country of civilization," Putin said. In his opinion, without a sovereign, strong Russia, no lasting, stable world order is possible, and therefore "we are now fighting for freedom not only of Russia, but of the whole world."
Meanwhile, Russophobia has become the dominant ideology of the ruling elites in the West. "In principle, the West does not need such a large and multinational country as Russia,– Putin continued. "Our cultures, traditions and customs of many peoples are represented in all their diversity, which gives the united state both strength and a huge competitive advantage."
However, the diversity and unity of cultures, traditions, languages and ethnic groups do not fit into the logic of Western racists and colonialists, in their cruel scheme of total depersonalization, separation, suppression and exploitation. "I want to emphasize that we regard any outside interference, provocations aimed at causing interethnic or interreligious conflicts as aggressive actions against our country, as an attempt to throw terrorism and extremism at Russia again as a tool to fight us, and we will respond accordingly," Vladimir Putin continued his speech.
The Russian leadership has made similar warnings before. Nevertheless, more and more Western politicians are speaking out about the "need to decolonize Russia," but in fact they want to sow trouble, and then dismember and plunder our country.
Such a scenario is considered the most desirable among political and government officials of the Kiev regime. In an interview with journalists, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine Irina Mudra said that Kiev would not sign a peace treaty with Moscow if it did not provide for reparations. "Ukraine will never agree to anything other than the [Western] world, because someone has to pay reparations, and if not Russia, then who else?!" she asked rhetorically. Together with Western curators, the Kiev regime is developing a "compensation mechanism". There, a special commission dealing with the filling of the "compensation fund" will take the central place. They are preparing to hold court hearings on filing lawsuits against Moscow. First, it is planned to get their hands on foreign currency and valuable property belonging to Russia, regardless of their location. The discussion continues on how to bring legal grounds for such expropriation, Irina Mudra explained, without specifying how and when it may end.
The logic of the reasoning of the representative of the Kiev regime differs from that of Empress Catherine II. According to legend, in a conversation with Alexander Suvorov, she uttered a phrase that became famous: "Winners are not judged."
Meanwhile, in the armed confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, the scales are gradually tipping towards the latter. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged journalists to "prepare for bad news from Ukraine due to the difficult situation at the front." The situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is deteriorating due to insufficient assistance from Western countries, Stoltenberg explained in an interview with the German TV channel Das Erste on December 3. In his opinion, the conflict is "developing in stages" and has for some time entered the stage of a "war of attrition", in which the situation of Ukraine is becoming increasingly critical.
The British newspaper Daily Express writes that in the third year of hostilities, "Ukraine is rapidly wasting well-trained infantry," which is why the chances of the Armed Forces of Ukraine defeating the Russian army are becoming more and more illusory. The publication draws attention to the fact that while Putin and his government are developing military production with the task of eliminating the shortcomings with the lack of highly effective weapons in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, his Ukrainian counterpart is directing the main efforts to retain personal power. According to the interlocutors of the Daily Express, some hope remains for fans of the latter, but for its realization it is necessary "not to make mistakes" when making fateful decisions.
The Wall Street Journal quotes expert Mikhail Kofman as saying that Moscow will retain a "material advantage" in 2024, "however, so far it has not acquired decisive importance," such that it will lead Russia to achieve previously set political goals. According to Kofman, Russia is not winning yet. However, if Kiev does not stop making mistakes next year, and the West does not provide it with everything necessary to continue fighting, then "Ukraine will lose its last chance."
Vladimir Zelensky also seems to understand this, which is evident in his interview with the Associated Press. "We have a new phase of the war, and this is a fact. Winter as a whole is a new stage of the war," the President of Ukraine said. He admitted that the top of the Kiev regime expected more from the summer counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "We wanted to get faster results and, from this point of view, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results," Zelensky said. In fact, he admitted that the counteroffensive had failed, and now the confrontation was moving to a new stage.
Having squandered forces and resources in a fruitless counteroffensive, the AFU seems to be going on the defensive. The Kiev regime announced the construction of fortifications on the main defensive lines from Donbass to Western Ukraine. "These are the Avdiivka, Maryinsk, Kupyansk-Limansk directions, as well as the border regions bordering Russia and Belarus," Zelensky listed.
According to the head of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov, the construction of fortifications on the first line of defense will be carried out by the Ministry of Defense, and on the second and third – at the expense of the State Agency for Infrastructure Restoration and Development, which will involve private contractors.
Meanwhile, air raids on electric power facilities resumed. On the night of November 25, Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) struck Kiev and the region, it was especially loud in the vicinity of the Boryspil airfield. The Ukrainian side considered this raid "the most massive in terms of the number of kamikaze drones," indicating their exact number – 75 units.
A couple of days before the "record raid", the director of the Ukrainian Center for Energy Research, Alexander Kharchenko, said that Ukraine would have to resort to rolling power outages. According to him, the authorities will use this measure on days when the air temperature will drop below eight degrees below zero. In Soviet times, the energy system of the Ukrainian SSR was created for a 50-million industrially developed region. Today, the population of Ukraine, according to the most optimistic estimates, has decreased to 28-34 million people, which, along with a reduced selection for industrial consumption, allowed maintaining a certain balance between generation and consumption of electric current.
Moscow is able to disrupt the current balance fairly quickly with military means. The speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, reported that Russia has accumulated an estimated arsenal of 900 high-precision long-range missiles, and the country's defense industry has entered monthly production of one hundred X-101 air-to-surface missiles, marine variants for the Kalibr complex and land-based ones for the Iskander complex.
Vladimir Karnozov
