Putin orders Russian army to become second largest after China’s at 1.5 million-strong

President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the regular size of the Russian army to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make it the second largest in the world after China’s.

In a decree published on the Kremlin’s website, Putin ordered the overall size of the armed forces to be increased to 2.38 million people, of which he said 1.5 million should be active servicemen.

According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading military think tank, such an increase would see Russia leapfrog the United States and India in terms of the number of active combat soldiers it has at its disposal and be second only to China in size. The IISS said Beijing has just over 2 million active duty service personnel.

The move, the third time Putin has expanded the army’s ranks since sending his military into Ukraine in February 2022, comes as Russian forces push forward in eastern Ukraine on parts of a vast 1,000 km (627-mile) frontline and try to eject Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region.

Although Russia has a population more than three times larger than Ukraine’s and has been successfully recruiting volunteers on lucrative contracts to fight in Ukraine, it has – like Kyiv’s forces – been sustaining heavy battlefield losses, and there is no sign of the war ending anytime soon.

Read more: Putin’s options for Ukraine missiles response include nuclear test, experts say

Both sides say the exact size of their losses is a military secret.

Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defence committee, said the increase in active troop numbers was part of a plan to overhaul the armed forces and gradually increase their size to match what he described as the current international situation and the behaviour of “our former foreign partners.”

“For example, we now need to form new structures and military units to ensure security in the north-west (of Russia) since Finland, with which we border, has joined the NATO bloc,” Kartapolov told Parlamentskaya Gazeta, the Russian parliament’s in-house newspaper.

“And in order to carry out this process, we need to increase the number of troops.”