Russian Mobilization Won’t Change the Course of the War

by Olha Povaliaieva
Monday, September 26, 2022
2 MIN
Russian Mobilization Won’t Change the Course of the War

The American Institute for the study of war published a report interpreting the mobilization as a failure of Putin, and the mobilization itself as useless

On September 21, Russia announced a partial mobilization. According to Putin's order, the state has the right to mobilize a million people to attack Ukraine. According to the Institute for the study of war, the protests of the Russian population are an indicator of Putin's repeated failures in preparing his people for war.

"Russia will mobilize reservists for this conflict. The process will be ugly, the quality of the reservists poor, and their motivation to fight likely even worse. But the systems are sufficiently in place to allow military commissars and other Russian officials to find people and send them to training units and thence to war. But the low quality of the voluntary reserve units produced by the BARS and volunteer battalion efforts is likely a reliable indicator of the net increase in combat power Russia can expect to generate in this way. This mobilization will not affect the course of the conflict in 2022 and may not have a very dramatic impact on Russia's ability to sustain its current level of effort into 2023. The problems undermining Putin's effort to mobilize his people to fight, finally, are so deep and fundamental that he cannot likely fix them in the coming months—and possibly for years," ISW.

According to the Institute, Putin is facing severe challenges in his attempts to wage war against Ukraine. Attempts to mobilize a million citizens to continue terrorism against Ukraine will not solve the fundamental problems of this war and will not bring victory. There have been at least 4 mobilizations in the past year, depleting the pool of available, qualified, or at least willing to fight reservists. The mobilization that began the other day will bring together only people who actively show their unwillingness to fight, as well as those who do not have military training and experience.

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