Putin boosts Russian military numbers with new decree

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday increasing the number of soldiers in the Russian army by 180,000. This means that his army will soon be larger than the American one.

Putin's decree, which comes into effect on December 1st, sets the total military personnel in the Russian army at 2.4 million, including 1.5 million soldiers, reports "The Moscow Times".

This is the third expansion of the armed forces since Putin began the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. For the first time, he ordered an increase in the size of the army by 137,000 soldiers in August 2022. He did it again in December of last year when he ordered an increase of 170,000 soldiers.

The Onet portal points out that the implementation of Putin's decree will increase Russia's army to surpass the American army, which currently has 1.3 million soldiers.

In this way, Putin will command the second-largest military in the world in terms of the number of soldiers. Only China has a larger army, with 2.03 million soldiers.

Putin decided to expand the army shortly after warning the West that allowing Ukraine to use long-range weapons to attack targets deep inside his country "would put NATO at war" with Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the reasons for Putin's decision, replied that "this is due to the number of threats that exist to our country along the perimeter of our borders" - "It is caused by the extremely hostile environment on our western borders and instability on our eastern borders."