"The war could drag on for another one and a half to two years." The generals of the General Staff urged Putin to start mass mobilization
15 hours ago
Russia's military leadership is in favor of starting a general mobilization to make up for the shortage of personnel in the six-month-long war with Ukraine, despite plans for a quick and effective blitzkrieg.
According
to Important Stories, citing army officials and sources in the General Staff, the military characterizes the shortage of soldiers and officers at the front as "catastrophic."
The number of the Russian group, taking into account the troops of the LPR and the DPR, is estimated at 150-180 thousand people, while the Ukrainian army numbered 250 thousand people before the start of hostilities, and taking into account the mobilization, it was brought up to 700 thousand.
Refusal to mobilize - the first for Russia since 1945 - the military leadership considers a big mistake, sources say "Important stories". The generals believe that the current number of Russian military personnel is not enough to quickly capture several regions of Ukraine, and with the current pace of army advance, the war could drag on for another one and a half to two years.
And while the stalled campaign in Donbass is once again delaying annexation referendums, Putin cannot make up his mind to take an unpopular step. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is also afraid to go to the president and raise the issue of at least partial mobilization, because before the invasion, he promised that everything would be resolved quickly and exclusively by the forces of a professional army, that is, with the help of available contract soldiers.
Now Shoigu has fallen into disgrace: Putin directly communicates with his subordinate generals, and after the fiasco near Kyiv, he even tried to command the troops himself.
Shoigu, according to the sources of Important Stories, tried to promote materials about the mobilization through the media so that the necessary “analytics” lay on the table for Putin. But so far, these efforts have come to nothing. As a result, the army is forced to recruit "volunteers" from prisons and refuse to dismiss those who wish to break the contract.
But that doesn't help get the campaign off the ground, and the generals blame the lack of troops: the army is outnumbered and that's why it's moving so slowly, Big Stories sources say.
Faced with the fiasco of his original plans and massive losses, estimated by NATO at 15,000 to 20,000 dead, Putin is seeking negotiations. He signaled readiness for a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky through Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
But Zelensky, armed with Western weapons, refused. Negotiations with Russia are impossible until Russian troops leave Ukraine, Zelensky said after a tripartite meeting with Erdogan and UN Secretary General António Guterres in Lvov.
According to Erdogan, who has assumed the role of chief negotiator with Russia, both Zelenskiy and Guterres agreed that the war in Ukraine should be ended at the negotiating table. The representative of the Guterres delegation, Farhan Haq, in turn, admitted that negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow regarding the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine are still far away.