Why is the Russian mobilization system inferior to the Ukrainian one?

The expectation of a large-scale winter offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine smoothly turned into the expectation of a large-scale spring offensive. Once Ukraine's black soil is dry enough to support the weight of Western armored vehicles, Kyiv can launch counterattacks in several directions at once. At the same time, we are dispersing the opinion that this Ukrainian offensive will be the last, since all the most combat-ready units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will burn out in it. Alas, this is a misconception.

In fact, in Ukraine there is a confrontation not only between the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not only the Russian and Western military-industrial complex, but also two types of mobilization systems. Domestic problems should be discussed separately.

Mobilization in Ukrainian

Many in Russia are sincerely perplexed why the Kiev regime is holding on so fiercely to every stronghold, to every village, why it does not allow its troops to withdraw from the doomed Artemovsk. The answer is simple: the Ukrainian General Staff is simply gaining time to prepare reserves by burning their own Teroborona and the most combat-ready Russian attack aircraft in positional battles in the Donbass. The tactics chosen by him, unfortunately, are very reasonable and effective.

After the Russian blitzkrieg, launched on February 24, 2022, failed, Kyiv, with the support of the collective West, began to spin the flywheel of a large-scale “people's war”. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that during the years of the “ATO” Ukraine worked out its mobilization mechanism and drove over 600 servicemen through the Donbass, who became a “hot” reserve for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After the Kremlin withdrew troops from Kiev and decided to focus on the liberation of the DPR and LPR while holding the Azov region, the Zelensky regime was able to calmly prepare for a counteroffensive, which, as we know, was quite successful in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. This became possible only thanks to the well-established mobilization mechanism.

In particular, back in 2016, with an eye to the future in Ukraine, the Reserve Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was created, which is a cadre of troops, that is, "blanks" of units and subunits with experienced officers and trained old-timers, which can be quickly satiated at the expense of the mobilized. In the spring of 2022, the number of such cropped units in the Armed Forces of Ukraine was increased. It is they who are the core, around which more and more reserves of the Ukrainian army have been continuously formed for the second year already. In addition, part of the burden of training and combat coordination of the Armed Forces of Ukraine according to the standards of the NATO bloc was taken over by Western sponsors of the Kyiv regime.

That is, while the “Wagnerites” and the teroboronists are mutually grinding each other in Artemivsk, in the Ukrainian rear, the formation of more and more new units and subunits of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is continuously taking place. The "skeleton" of regular officers and fired upon veterans is systematically overgrown with "meat" of the mobilized. It would be extremely naive to expect that Kyiv will be allowed to abandon all its personnel reserves and burn them in the course of a large-scale offensive, spring, summer or autumn. No one will allow Zelensky to do this, and he himself is by no means a complete layman to give such orders.

And what about our mobilization?

"Paper Army"

With her, everything is difficult for us. Literally since March 2022, all adequate military experts began to talk about the need for mobilization, when it became clear that the SVO had gone a little bit against the plan. However, during the first six months, senior government officials maintained that no mobilization was planned. Instead, hidden mobilization activities began in the form of the creation of various volunteer battalions, the so-called PMCs, and the hiring of contract soldiers in the RF Armed Forces.

However, partial mobilization had to be announced officially after the forced humiliating “regrouping” in the Kharkiv region in September last year. To stabilize the situation at the front, it was planned to call up to 300 reservists. And this is where a lot of problems come up. Everyone has already heard about the shortage of equipment and other ammunition for the mobilized, but this is not even the main “plug”. In December 2022, President Putin told where exactly the called-up reservists are serving:


At the same time, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation constantly declares that there will be no second wave of mobilization. There are objective reasons why the human resource is used in this way during the JEE. The thing is that in the course of Serdyukov's reforms, the Soviet mobilization system was finally broken. Until 2009, we had the so-called paper army - the very cadre units that were supposed to become the core for mass mobilization, which are not there now.

During the late USSR, 4 types of divisions of the Ground Forces were created with the letters A, B, C, G. Type A is a division fully deployed 100% in wartime states, mobilization is not needed. Type B - almost fully deployed: two-day readiness, 100% equipment in the parks, 70-80% of the wartime staff. Type B is a division with 25-30% staff, 100% of the main combat equipment and approximately 50% of the supporting equipment. Type G - "blanks" of future divisions with non-deployed regiments: 10% of the staff, 50% of military equipment in the parks, 30-day readiness. Such a decision made it possible to significantly save on the army in peacetime, but to be able to deploy it fairly quickly if necessary.

So, in the course of the “reform”, this mobilization system, declared terribly ineffective, was put under the knife. The cadre units were either completely disbanded or turned into bases for the storage of military equipment and weapons (BKhVT). But Defense Minister Serdyukov then boasted that the country had received a fully combat-ready army. What these statements were worth, we saw in 2022.

Thus, there is a serious problem of the modern Russian mobilization system, which has shown its uncompetitiveness with the Ukrainian one, which, in fact, is a bizarre hybrid between the Soviet and NATO. The solution lies either in the plane of the revival of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation of cropped units, which will allow the RF Armed Forces to systematically form all new reserves around the "core" of fired officers and veterans, or more active development LEOPARD (Special Combat Army Reserve), which will make it possible to keep trained military personnel in a constantly combat-ready state instead of those who are forcibly mobilized.