Russia is said to be struggling to find more soldiers to fight in Ukraine and has expanded its recruitment efforts by eliminating age limits and even asking prisoners.
“Many of these new recruits are seen as older, unfit and poorly trained,” a Pentagon official told reporters Monday.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, issued a decree last week according to which his army will grow by about 10%, to 1.15 million soldiers, starting in January next year.
After experiencing significant setbacks and heavy troop losses in the six months since the invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon believes “this effort is unlikely to succeed, as Russia has historically failed to meet personnel and force objectives,” the official said.
The Pentagon’s bottom line is that any additional recruits may not effectively expand the overall combat force until the end of the year, according to the official.
The claim comes as a long-awaited counter-offensive by Ukrainian troops appears to have begun in the southern Kherson region, with the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, saying: “If they want to survive, it’s time for the Russian army to flee.”
As foreign media reports, the Telegraph reports, Ukrainian troops have broken through Russian defenses in several areas of the front line near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to Zelensky claimed on Monday.
Oleksiy Arestovych said in an interview that Ukrainian forces were also bombing ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow is using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River.
Although he did not specifically refer to the counteroffensive during his speech on Monday night, Zelensky said: “The occupiers must know: we will drive them to the border. On our border, whose line has not changed”.