A top US general told Congress last week that Russia’s military is 15% bigger today than it was before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, an acknowledgment that the goal of “weakening” Russia has failed.
“The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the head of US European Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Cavoli said that over the past year, Russia had increased its “front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000,” which he said was due to Russia raising the maximum age of conscription from 27 to 30.
“In sum, Russia is on track to command the largest military on the continent,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia will be larger, more lethal, and angrier with the West than when it invaded.”
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell recently made similar comments, saying the US had “assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”
Back in April 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared one goal of the proxy war was to “weaken” Russia. More recently, hawks in Congress have been claiming that the damage being done to the Russian military is a good enough reason to continue fueling the conflict.
Besides bolstering its military, Russia has also increased its industrial capabilities and is producing nearly three times as many artillery shells than the US and Europe combined, demonstrating that time is on Moscow’s side in the conflict.