This is an article written nearly 6 months ago. It is still quite predictable today. As long as the strange battle situations that occurred on the battlefields of Russia and Ukraine are eliminated and carefully analyzed, the actual necessity is far greater than accidental. The objective laws of war do not deviate from the trajectory of development because of outsiders' subjective understanding. -------First of the article.
This article was first published on March 28th, until the end.
The recent Russian-Ukrainian war has aroused continuous attention. Among them, the Russian army is very powerful, and fighting Ukraine is a piece of cake, but after fighting the war, I found that something was wrong. The high-tech weapons I imagined were overwhelming, and I lost all the bases that Ukraine beaten and destroyed. Now Ukrainian aircraft can still be launched, and air defense missiles and dot-U ballistic missiles are still launched; it shows that the Russian precision guided weapon is seriously insufficient. This shows that Russia has not enough money; on the other hand, the original idea of a large-scale attack, annihilation war, and a large-scale siege war, but now except for Kerson , has not occupied an important city (it was reported yesterday that Mariupol was captured, but the bullets were still allowed to fly for a while), Kiev , Kharkov , Sumei, and Nikolayev are all fighting or forming a confrontation, which shows that the Russian army's strength is seriously insufficient.
Russian ground combat forces are mainly composed of the following aspects: Russian Army, Russian Guards, Russian Airborne Forces, Russian Naval Infantry Forces, Donetsk , Lugansk People's Army, Russian Special Forces, Chechen troops, and mercenary troops.
National Guards established in 2016
Here we mainly introduce the main Russian army troops. There is a question that first needs to be clarified, how many people are there in the Russian army now. The online data at home and abroad are quite chaotic. People who don’t understand may take the Russian army for granted the Soviet army back then. Does the army still have millions of troops?
Army, in hand, there is a AK-74M
Below is the introduction of the Russian army by different media at home and abroad. We pay attention to some of the army
1. 2013 information 420,000 people say
Russian Army _Baidu Encyclopedia (baidu.com)
2. 2016 information 240,000 people say
Russian Federation Armed Forces _Baidu Encyclopedia (baidu.com)
3. 2017 information 350,000 people say
Russian Ground Forces | Military Wiki | Fandom
4. In this year's article, 280,000 people say
The deterrence of the weak - Talk about Putin and Russia_World News (guancha.cn)
You can see that the introduction of the Russian army's forces is quite divided, ranging from 420,000 to 240,000. The most widely used by domestic media is 350,000. Considering the time and reliability of various materials, the author believes that 280,000 is reliable. When we analyze the data, we must first see whether the source is authoritative. Except for the official announcement of Russia, what is more credible is the senior military think tanks and military intelligence agencies of various countries. The source of 350,000 in 2017 was the US Defense Intelligence Agency, but the composition of 350,000 people was not specifically introduced. A self-media used authoritative simple defense data in 2020. In addition, the data published by the US Congress Research Institute is the same as the simple defense data. Therefore, the author basically agrees that the Russian Army now has only 280,000 people, which is just a medium-sized army in the world.
You must learn to find information
The regular army of the Russian army has 3 services, army, navy, and aerospace army, and 2 independent arms Strategic rocket soldiers and airborne soldiers. Among them, the airborne troops also perform ground combat tasks. If we calculate the naval infantry , special forces, army and airborne troops that also perform ground combat, and find that the number of people is about 350,000, so the data of 350,000 in some places may be calculated based on the ground combat forces before.
After analyzing this problem, let’s take a look at the formation of Russian ground combat forces.After the Russian army implemented the "New Look" military reform in 2008, the six major military regions were merged into four, and the corresponding joint strategic command was established. The joint strategic command could unified the command of the army, navy and aerospace forces within the military region. This time, the military reform achieved the goal of separation of "military, political and military orders" and transforming from the military region into a war zone, which was several years earlier than our similar military reforms. In 2017, the Northern Fleet was formed into the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command, and was upgraded to a military region on New Year's Day 2021. In this way, Russia currently has five military regions and five joint strategic commands, namely the Eastern, Western, Northern, Central, and Southern Military Regions. The Eastern Military Region is composed of part of the original Far East Military Region and the Siberian Military Region (formerly Outer Baikal Military Region), and the command headquarters is located in Khabarovsk . The Western Military Region was established based on the former Moscow Military Region and Leningrad Military Region, and its command headquarters was in , St. Petersburg . Part of the Central Military Region Volga-Ural Military Region and the Siberian Military Region, the Military Region Command is located in Yekaterinburg .
Southern Military Region was established based on the North Caucasus Military Region, and the command center was in Rostov . The last Northern Military Region was established based on the Northern Fleet and its command was in North Morsk. The ground combat forces of the Russian regular army currently have a total of 12 armies and 4 armies. Because the reforms of the division and brigade are still continuing to be affected by the war, there are some delays, and there may be errors in statistics, please point them out. This article only introduces combat forces, omitting combat support forces such as artillery, air defense , logistics, electronic warfare .
Blue Beret Airborne's exclusive
1. The Western Military Region, 3 armies plus 1 army, the First Guard Tank Army, the 20th Guard Army, the Sixth Army, and 3 Airborne Division , 1 Airborne Brigade, and 2 Special Operations Brigades. The elite and main force of the Russian army are mainly in this military region.
2. The Eastern Military Region, 4 armies plus 1 armies, the Fifth Army, the 29th Army, the 35th Army, the 36th Army, and 2 airborne brigades, 1 special combat brigade, and 2 naval infantry brigades.
3. The Central Military Region is Russia's strategic reserve force, with weak troops, mainly two armies, the Second Guards Army and the Forty-first Army, as well as one airborne brigade and two special combat brigades.
4. The southern military region is close to many hot spots such as Abkhazi , South Ossetia , Armenia , Chechen , Georgia , Syria and other hot spots. It is the most frequent area in Russia in the past 20 years, so it maintains a relatively powerful force. The troops exceeded the Western Military Region. It mainly consists of three armies plus one army, the Eighth Guards Army, the Forty-Ninth Army, the Fifty-Eighth Army, and 1 Airborne Division and 2 Special Operations Brigades.
Naval infantry must be black beret
5. The northern military region is mainly the northern fleet, with few land combat forces, and is organized into one army and three brigades.
Another major problem is the shortage of military forces, which is the military service system. Russia's population growth is slow or even negative, which has led to a decrease in the number of male citizens serving in the military at the right age. Russia has been facing the problem of serious shortage of military resources for a long time. Russian soldiers are composed of contract-based soldiers and conscripts. Now the Russian Military Service Law, the Military Personnel Law, stipulates that the service period of conscripts begins in 2008 for one year. The original plan was that
service men were insufficient, and beauty must be brought together. Russia increased the number of female soldiers
contract soldiers must reach 70% of all soldiers, but Russia's military expenditure was insufficient and it could not afford the salary. Now it can only achieve 40%, that is, 60% of the main soldiers in the war. If 300,000 of the 350,000 ground personnel were soldiers, there were 180,000 conscripts.Conscripts not only lack combat effectiveness, but also according to Russian law, conscripts cannot participate in foreign operations and can only defend their homes and perform overseas peacekeeping missions.
3 March 9 Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Konashenkov admitted that active conscripts participated in this "special operation" against Ukraine. Konashenkov said almost all conscripted conscripts had withdrawn from Ukraine, adding that the military is currently investigating how they initially participated in the operation to ensure that such incidents do not happen again. According to TASS , Putin also stated after receiving the relevant report that relevant personnel must be punished and conscripts cannot participate in the operation against Ukraine. If these conscripts are removed, how many people can the Russian army send? After a long battle period, personnel will still need to be rotated. Students with good mathematics can see that the total strength of the war in Ukraine is actually weak, but because of the superior firepower and the superior information power, they control the initiative in the battlefield, which is a bit similar to the US military. The US military has no advantage in almost all wars today and contemporary times, but the US military basically crushes its opponents in terms of firepower and information power, which the Russian army cannot do.
