- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60029299
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the conscription of 160,000 into military service.
The decree, which was reported by news agency Interfax and also published on the government website for legal announcements, says conscription applies to all citizens aged between 18 and 30 and covers the period from April to July.
Why do news media have to repeat this kind of weirdness:
What kind of “territorial gains” is it that during all of year 2024 the Russia managed to gain 0.7 percent of Ukraine’s total area. Less than one percent! That is in no manner significant. Taking over 0.7 of a country’s land means the frontline having frozen in place, not the country gaining territory.
And of course, if we take the events in Kursk province into account, the percentage gets even lower…
Also, this article says “will conscript”, while in reality it is “wants to conscript”. Putin can want whatever. Being able to get what it wants is a whole different question.
It’s so dumb, it’s basically invisible on the chart, that’s how small the territorial changes are over what, 15 months? What a joke. It only cost them a whole generation of men.
Two questions.
Who is reporting the 0.7% figure you’re reporting, and how is it able to be confirmed as true?
If putin wants to conscript 160k soldiers, what’s stopping him?
Nobody is reporting the 0.7 %. What they’re reporting is that the Russia gained about 4200 km² of Ukraine’s territory in 2024. That is reported by several sources, such as this one: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/8/russia-gained-4000sq-km-of-ukraine-in-2024-how-many-soldiers-did-it-lose
Ukraine’s total territory is 603 628 km², and 4200 km² of that translates to 0.7 %.
Some sources talk about just over 2000 km², which would be around 0.3 %, but the rough measurement I made on the map was around 4000 km², so I don’t trust the lower number.
You can search for “how much Ukrainian territory did Russians gain in 2024”, and 4200 and 2000 are numbers you will find.
This 4200 km² does not include the areas inside the Russian Federation around the city of Sudzha. There Russia lost a land area that equals about 0.2 % of Ukraine’s total land area, and if you count that in, then that brings the Russian gains down to 0.5% instead of 0.7 %.
I’m not really sure what’s stopping Putin, but at least all the previous times he’s declared how many new soldiers the Russia will recruit, they’ve fallen very short of that number.
What is known is that the Russia’s recruitment capacity is 25 000 to 35 000 new soldiers per month. It is not able to reform during wartime, because that reform would cause a mess for a few years, lowering the capacity for first.
He’s saying he’ll recruit those soldiers within 4 months. That translates to 40 000 per month, which vows over even the pessimistic estimates for its recruitment capacity. And that would mean that they only recruit conscripts and nobody else during those four months. Of they recruit others than conscripts, they have that much less capacity for the conscription.
They’re probably also counting the Russian land that the Russians reclaimed from the Ukrainians. You know, the land that Ukrainians invaded.
But there really wasn’t much of that, either.
The 0.7 % considers only Ukrainian territory, and completely ignores everything that happened inside the Russia
In the end of 2024, Ukraine controlled an area in the Kursk province that equaled about 0.2 % of Ukraine’s total territory. If that area was taken into account, the Russia’s net territory gain would be about 0.5 % of Ukraine’s total territory. At the peak of the Kursk province operation , Ukraine controlled about twice as big an area of the Kursk province as in the end, so an area equalling about 0.4 % of Ukraine’s total territory and 4/7 of the area the Russia managed to temporarily gain from Ukraine.
(Edit: and, my understanding is that the 4200 km² does not contain the territories Russia reclaimed, but now I’m getting a bit unsure, as I don’t remember the exact phrasing of the text telling how much area the Russia gained)