New conscripts will not increase Russia's combat power in short term - ISW

This was reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

On March 30, Putin signed a decree authorizing a six-month spring conscription in Russia, which provides for the draft of 147,000 Russians from April 1 to July 15. The Russian Federation conducts two cycles of conscription per year, with the spring conscription cycle involving 134,000 men.

Experts do not rule out that Moskow may use Belarus’ training capacity to support the increase of 13,000 conscripts from previous years. A Ukrainian military official reported on March 4 that Russian personnel training in Belarus do not exceed 9,000 to 10,000 at a time, and ISW previously observed Russian forces training up to 12,000 troops in Belarus.

Satellite imagery indicates that Russian forces training in Belarus at the Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground recently redeployed to Russia in mid-March, freeing up space for new Russian trainees.

"The new conscripts will not increase Russian combat power in the short term, as Russian conscripts must undergo months of training and service before they see combat," the Institute's report says.

Analysts also emphasize that Putin remains unlikely to deploy newly conscripted troops to participate in combat in Ukraine due to concerns for the stability of his regime. 

On March 30, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov stated that spring conscripts will not deploy to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine during the spring 2023 conscription.

"Kartapolov‘s statements may be true given that ISW has not observed the Russian military use conscripts on any significant scale on the frontlines since the first months of the war and especially since the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, the Moskva," the statement said.

Putin probably believed that the political cost of sending conscripts to the front line was higher than the mobilization in September 2022 in Russia, ISW said. 

Thus, in response to the Ukrainian army's counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region in September 2022, Putin did not send conscripts, but instead mobilized reservists to stabilize the collapsing front line.

"This decision indicated Putin’s policy preference for mobilizing reservists rather than committing conscripts to battle — likely for political reasons — even though conscripts entering the final months of their annual service obligation might fight more effectively than civilian reservists," experts say.

The Institute adds that the start of the new conscription period, even with a slightly increased number of conscripts, may actually reduce Russian training capacity for reservists and other personnel recruited via crypto-mobilization campaigns. 

• Ukrainian intelligence has reported that Russia is conducting a covert mobilization, recruiting several tens of thousands of people a month to fight in the war with Ukraine.