by Vasco Cotovio and Max Foster at cnn.com
Western officials have told CNN they believe Russia has a problem generating “trained military manpower.”
“[Russia has] acknowledged that they needed 400,000 more troops and that’s not just for the conflict [in Ukraine], but also to fulfil new formations which are going to be put on the new border with NATO and Finland,” the officials said in a briefing on Wednesday, answering a question from CNN.
“How they generate that is unclear at the moment.”
The officials told CNN they had seen Russia increase the conscription duration and widen the age range, but noted they hadn’t made an effort at launching a second mobilization.
“Whether the population can sustain another round of mobilization and whether the Kremlin actually wants to test the population’s resilience to that it is unclear at the moment, but the fact they haven’t done would indicate to us that they have some concerns about that,” the officials said.
The officials went on to say that in addition to getting people in Russia to join the military, Moscow had difficulties in providing them with training.
“We’ve seen Russian units been trained in Belarus, we’ve seen other Russian localized forces being pushed straight into the front with no training whatsoever,” they said.
“They’ve got a real problem in generating trained military manpower.”